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SERMONS OF A 
CHEMIST 


if BY 
EDWIN E. SLOSSON, PH.D., LL.D. 


Author of “Easy Lessons in Einstein,” “Creative Chemistry,” 
“Major Prophets of Today,” etc. Editor of “Keeping 
Up with Science,’ etc. Director of Science 
Service, Washington 





NEW YORK 
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY 
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC. 


PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY 
THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY 
RAHWAY, N, J. 


TO 
BROTHER ALFRED 
WHOSE SERMONS WERE THE INSPIRATION OF MY YOUTH 
AND TO 
SISTER FLORA 
WHOSE SYMPATHETIC ASSISTANCE HAS MADE THIS BOOK POSSIBLE 


THE AUTHOR DEDICATES IT 
WITH GRATITUDE AND AFFECTION 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https://archive.org/details/sermonsofchemist0Oslos 


PREFACE 


A SERMON by a lay-preacher may be worth listening to. 
It gives a parallax of thought and feeling as they appear to 
the observers from two very different points of view. If 
you wish to get the distance of a heavenly body, you know 
that you must take two observations from remote points of 
view,—in midsummer and midwinter, for instance. To get 
the parallax of heavenly truths, you must take an observa- 
tion from the position of the laity as well as of the clergy.— 
Suppose a minister were to undertake to express opinions 
on medical subjects, would you not think he was going 
beyond his province?—said the divinity student. Let us 
look at this matter—I said. If a minister had attended 
lectures on the theory and practice of medicine, delivered 
by those who had studied it most deeply, for thirty or forty 
years, at the rate of from fifty to one hundred a year,—if 
he had been constantly reading and hearing read the most 
approved text-books on the subject,—if he had seen medi- 
cine practised according to different methods, daily, for the 
same length of time,—I should think, that if a person of 
average understanding, he was entitled to express an opinion 
on the subject of medicine, or else his instructors were a 
set of ignorant and incompetent charlatans. 

OLIVER WENDELL HoLMEs. 


These remarks by “The Professor at the Breakfast Table” 
must serve as my justification for this book. 


But today the clergy are not so jealous of their preroga- 
Vi 


vi PREFACE 


tive as they were in the time of Dr. Holmes. In fact, I 
think that they are inclined to the opposite extreme, that 
they relinquish too readily their function as teachers of the 
church and are too much inclined to call in a layman, dis- 
tinguished in other fields, to express his amateurish views of 
the theological and ethical questions on which they are by 
training and profession the expert authorities. 

Be that as it may, the preacher nowadays is not perched 
so high above his parishioners as he was in former times, 
and it is easier to climb from the pew into the pulpit. As 
professor and as editor I have frequently been called upon 
for talks in college chapels, and as elder or deacon in 
Presbyterian and Congregational churches for the last thirty 
years I have occasionally had to occupy the pulpit when 
the preacher failed to appear or during an interregnum in 
the pastorate. On such occasions it is the custom for kind- 
hearted members of the congregation, seeing that the 
speaker was no preacher but was doing his best, to come 
forward and shake his hand and express the polite wish 
that they could see the sermon in print that they might 
preserve it and ponder it at leisure. 

I have figured up that if all those who have expressed 
such a desire would buy a copy of this book the sale of the 
first edition is assured. Anyhow it is worth trying the 
experiment. 

EDWIN E. SLosson. 


CONTENTS 


THE CHEMISTRY OF THE GREATEST MIRACLE IN THE 
BIBLE x ” ; ; ; j 


THE SPIRITUALIZATION OF DatLty LIFE 

THE CHURCH AS A PROMOTER . : : : f 
PAINTING THE PICTURE OF GOD . 

BLACK AND WHITE . ; : : : : : ; 
FAITH : : 2 : : ; : . d : 
THE INTERNAL CONFLICT . : ‘ : : ‘ 
THE GREAT BACKSLIDING . \ : ; : , 
THE REVIVAL OF WITCHCRAFT . , 

THE UsEs oF ADVERSITY . 4 d : ; 
LOOKING BACKWARD AND LIVING FoRWARD : 4 
INVERTED Hypocrisy . : : 4 : 

TELLING THE TRUTH . 2 j . : : k 
Tue Duty or INTELLIGENCE y ! : : p 
THE GEOMETRY OF ETHICS . ; : 4 : 
RELIGION AND RELATIVITY 

THE EtHIcs oF EVOLUTION . : 4 ; 

A SERMON WITHOUT TEXT OR MORAL . : : : 
EAcH IN His OWN TONGUE . oyu ks 

WHEN WE WERE HEATHEN . : ; ; 

Lest We FoRGET . : x ‘ ; , : ) 
Tue NINE SONS OF SATAN . ‘ d 5 : ; 


INDEX } : : i , : ‘ i ( y 
vii 


PAGE 


106 
124 
137 
142 
164 
175 
189 
200 
203 
226 
247 
252 
273 
284 
299 
317 


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ees 

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SERMONS OF A CHEMIST 


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THE CHEMISTRY OF THE GREATEST 
MIRACLE IN THE BIBLE 


And God formed man out of the dust of the ground. 
Genesis 2:7. 


I HAVE chosen this particular miracle for discussion 
for three reasons especially. 

First, because it is such a remarkable event in itself. 
It is, as it seems to me, unquestionably the greatest 
miracle narrated in the Bible or out of it. Not only 
has nothing stranger occurred in the history of the 
world, but nothing so astounding has ever been imag- 
ined by any romancer. This truth is stranger than 
any fiction ever devised. The gulf between animate 
and inanimate matter is so great that we cannot con- 
ceive, if we did not know it was true, that a clod should 
ever feel and think. The more we study it the deeper 
appears the mystery. There is no other subject prob- 
ably which is engaging so much attention on the part 
of scientists. The problem is being attacked on the 
one side by chemists and on the other side by physiol- 
ogists, but it is not at all solved. They are like work- 
men tunneling a mountain, who have been working 
from opposite sides for years but have not yet met and 
cannot yet see through it. 

The importance of this miracle appears, too, when 
we think that if it had never occurred this world would 


be a mere insensate ball of stone rolling through space. 
3 


4 CHEMISTRY OF GREATEST MIRACLE 


When we look at the stars on a clear night we count 
thousands of these suns, each of which may have as 
many planets as our sun. Yet of all the spheres in 
God’s unmeasured universe this is probably the only 
one on which this miracle of life has happened. All 
worlds but ours are dead worlds. The chances against 
such a thing occurring are millions to one. Yet it did 
occur, and we here are living witnesses of it. It was 
the birth, not of an individual, but the birth of all 
mankind. 

The second reason why I think this miracle may be 
of interest to you is that it is of especial interest to 
me. It is a chemical miracle. It is just as much a 
chemical statement as that hydrogen and oxygen unite 
to form water, and that wood burns to ashes, water, 
and carbon dioxide gas, or that wine turns to vinegar. 
It should be studied, tested, and examined in the same 
way as any other phenomenon. It is because I know 
something, although very little, about this miraculous 
transformation that I choose it in preference to other 
remarkable events belonging to departments of science 
which I have not studied. 

The third reason why I selected this miracle is be- 
cause of its indisputability. No one can doubt that it 
occurred. If I had taken other chemical miracles, for 
example, the changing of the river Nile into blood, or 
the water at the marriage feast into wine, it might 
have been objected by some that they did not believe 
it. Some might have said with great reason that in an 
unscientific age we could not expect an exact state- 
ment of facts which would withstand all the destructive 
criticism of after ages. Others might have said with 


OUT OF THE DUST 5 


equal reason that we are not expected to take literally 
the legends of Orientals who are so much given to 
allegory and metaphor. It would be useless for me to 
talk about anything that you did not all accept as 
literally true. And this particular miracle cannot be 
doubted because we see it repeated all about us every 
day, yes, even in our own bodies. For what was true 
of Adam is true of us. Each one of us was created 
out of the dust of the earth, not thousands of years 
ago, but within the past few months. If any one raises 
the objection that Adam did not exist, I will take in- 
stead Adam Smith or any one you please. In the 
original Hebrew, I have been told, “Adam” is not a 
proper name; it is simply ““Man.” So far as we know 
all men were formed from the dust of the ground, and 
although it would be impossible to prove that Adam, 
or some one else, was not created in a different way 
from that described in the Bible, it is so improbable 
as to be inconceivable. We have to accept this daily 
miracle on faith, for we do not understand it. 

God is the same yesterday, today and forever. His 
laws are the immutable laws of nature. In him alone 
there is no variation. If this were not so the world 
would be a chance world where we could rely upon 
nothing. Water might run up and down hill with equal 
readiness. We might grow old one week and young the 
next. We would plant wheat expecting a harvest in a 
few months, but the seed might come up the next day 
and then prove to be cabbages. It is only our faith in 
the unaltering will of God that prevents us from ex- 
pecting these things to happen. We do not know why 
they don’t. We only believe they will not and never 


6 CHEMISTRY OF GREATEST MIRACLE 


have happened. So we have no hesitation in saying 
that Adam was created as we were, that is out of the 
dust of the ground. 

It is no less a miracle as a result of direct natural 
causes. A natural law is simply a statement of what 
will happen under certain circumstances; and this 
miracle is an unexplained chemical action. It does 
not make it less a miracle that it has happened many 
million times since Adam. It makes a difference in 
the surprise it causes in us, but the act is the same 
whether repeated or not. If I should be able to change 
lead into gold, just once, without knowing how I did 
it, under such conditions that no one could doubt it, 
I would be regarded as the greatest chemist in the 
world. Would that reputation be lessened if I could 
repeat it every day? Or if I could explain how I did 
it? Or even if I could teach others how to do it? On 
the contrary, the more times the act was repeated, the 
more completely the process was explained, so that any- 
body could do it, the greater would be the admiration 
aroused. 

So a miracle is not the less a miracle if it can be 
explained. Not that we can really “explain” anything 
ultimately, but many things we can understand suffi- 
ciently to satisfy all except the most curious among 
us, and that we call “explaining.” 

Those among us whose God is Lord of the Unusual 
and Inexplicable alone live in a constant state of fright 
lest he should be eventually expelled from the universe 
by the finite minds of men. They are lovers of dark- 
ness rather than light, not because their deeds are evil, 
but because their faith is frail. But science is like a 


NO LAWS IN NATURE vs 


camp-fire on a dark night. As you throw more wood 
on the flame, the lighted circle widens, but the sur- 
rounding darkness expands in proportion and becomes 
more impenetrable. As the area of enlightenment 
spreads we come into contact with more mystery. 

If a miracle is an event absolutely unique in the 
history of the world, if it could never happen again 
under any circumstances, then it does not matter in 
the least whether it is authenticated or not. Science 
can make nothing of it, not even the science of theology. 
But if a miracle is a spectacular demonstration of a 
universal law, then it is of permanent value to us. Its 
value, however, is not at all dependent upon the pres- 
ervation, or even the authenticity, of the record of that 
particular instance. If some antiquarian should un- 
earth a death-bed confession of Joseph Priestley stat- 
ing that he had never discovered oxygen, and that his 
paper, claiming that discovery, was a hoax, most chem- 
ists would not care enough about it to read it. Priestley 
may have been a fraud for all we know, but oxygen is 
a reality as we all know. 

Science is based not upon verified facts but upon 
verifiable facts. It seems to me that religion rests 
upon the same solid foundation. A transmutation 
of bread and wine into flesh and blood is indeed mirac- 
ulous and inexplicable, yet it is demonstrable and un- 
deniable. Anybody can do it. 

Some people have the idea that a miracle is a “‘viola- 
tion of the laws of nature.” This is an absurdity 
based on an exaggerated idea of what we call natural 
law, a common misconception among those unfamiliar 
with science. There are no laws im nature; there are 


8 CHEMISTRY OF GREATEST MIRACLE 


laws of nature which we make for ourselves. Strictly 
speaking, scientists do not discover the laws of nature. 
They invent them to describe the facts they find. 
These are mere descriptions of what has occurred in 
the past, and what therefore we have reason to believe 
will occur under the same circumstances in the future. 
A book on chemistry or botany is merely a history, 
after all. There can be no such thing as a violation 
of natural law, because it is self-contradictory. If the 
statement in a textbook is a true law there Is no excep- 
tion. If there is an exception the statement is not a 
true law. It must be revised. You can violate the 
Volstead Act and it still stands on the statute books. 
If you violate a scientific law you abolish it or rather 
you show that it never existed. 

Another absurd idea commonly heard is that because 
a miracle is the direct act of God it cannot be the result 
of natural causes. Everything that occurs is, in a 
sense, the direct act of God since without him nothing 
could happen or exist. Of the miracles of the Bible in 
many cases we are expressly told that there was an 
adequate natural cause. For example, the drying up 
of the Red Sea when the Israelites passed over. If 
it had not been expressly mentioned that this remark- 
able effect was caused by an east wind some people 
would have imagined it as the act of God reaching 
down and damming up the waters with his own right 
hand; or we would have had medieval artists painting 
pictures of angels sweeping back the waters with big 
brooms. 

It is related in the book of Joshua that when the 
Amorites were fleeing from battle, after having been 


STONES FROM HEAVEN 9 


defeated by the Israelites, the Lord chased them all the 
way up to Beth-horon and down on the other side, 
to Azekah and as far as Makkedah, and cast great 
stones down on them from heaven, and killed more of 
them than the Israelites had slain by the sword. 

Now imagine how an artist would represent that. 
In the twelfth century he would have made a great 
big old man with a long, white beard, throwing stones 
out of an upstairs window at the flying soldiers. In 
the sixteenth century he would have painted the Amo- 
rites pursued by what he called angels, fantastic crea- 
tures invented by himself, human beings with an extra 
pair of limbs, feathered, attached to their scapulas 
and held perpendicularly in such a way that they could 
be of no kind of use for a support, since their pos- 
sessors could neither flap them nor soar with them. 

If the passage had been left without further com- 
ment it would have been a stumbling block to Chris- 
tian faith. Infidels would have jeered at it as im- 
possible. Apologists would have tried to evade the 
question in some way, or would have called it a viola- 
tion of natural law and therefore a miracle. It was a 
miracle, a wonder, and a sign, but it was not a viola- 
tion of natural law, nor was it necessarily in any direct 
sense more the act of God than everything else, for 
the narrator goes on to mention incidentally the com- 
parative number of persons killed, as he says, by these 
hailstones. Reports of casualties from the victorious 
side are always to be received with caution, as we 
found in the late war, but the author evidently did 
not think that by assigning a natural cause he was mak- 
ing it less a miracle. 


10 CHEMISTRY OF GREATEST MIRACLE 


A natural law is simply a statement of what happens 
under certain circumstances. If we drop a stone, it 
falls to the ground. ‘The scientific way of stating it 
is that the stone and the world are drawn together by a 
force proportional to the product of their masses and 
inversely proportional to the square of the distance 
between them. The theistic way of stating it is that 
God puts the stone and the world together. Both are 
true; neither is an adequate explanation. 

The particular miracle we are considering is prob- 
ably the most completely inexplicable of all chemical 
actions. All we yet know is a little about the way the 
process goes on, but the more we know of it the more 
curious and marvellous it is. For example, the ma- 
terials which go to make up our bodies are found in the 
soil, the water and the air, and yet we are not able to 
make use of them directly. All the chemical elements 
of which we are made and which we have to get in 
our food are contained in any handful of dust we may 
pick up. Yet we cannot eat it, or if we do we cannot 
use it to build up our bodies. 

One of the most important elements of our bodies 
is nitrogen, our most expensive foods are those that 
contain it. Now the air is four-fifths nitrogen. Two 
minutes’ breathing would supply our need for the day, 
and with every breath we inhale enough nitrogen to 
meet our bodily wants for hours, but we let all the 
nitrogen out again without using a bit of it. The 
reason is that man is a dependent creature. Plants 
live off of the soi] and we live off of them. Most plants 
even cannot use this free nitrogen of the air, but have 
to have it prepared for their use in the ground. We 


THE DAILY RESURRECTION 11 


are parasites of the plants, and if we eat animal food 
we are parasites of parasites. So all the material of 
our bodies comes ultimately from the earth under our 
feet except the element oxygen which we get from the 
air we breathe. Thirty times a minute we repeat this 
miracle, some particles of non-living matter are drawn 
into our bodies and become living matter, just as with 
mathematical precision the reverse process is repeated. 
Particles of carbon which have formed part of our 
living bodies are thrown out with every breath and 
sink into the Nirvana of the inanimate world, chang- 
ing their allegiance from the animal to the mineral 
kingdom. 

This transformation from living to non-living matter 
is just as great a miracle as the reverse process when 
you think of it. If it is a wonder how we can live, 
so it is equally inexplicable how we can die. Life and 
death are the twin mysteries of the world. The double 
miracle of death and resurrection is the regular rhythm 
of life.t People say we die but once. Really we die 


1 Does all this sound too rhetorical and metaphysical to be re- 
garded as sober science? If so, I fear you have not kept up with 
the trend of recent scientific literature. My language is tame and 
prosaic compared, for example, with the following passages from 
the latest and most authoritative work on the science of the 
cell: 

“It is perfectly correct, therefore, from this point of view to 
speak of living and dead hydrogen atoms. We can even go farther 
with the simile if we wish and say that when the living highly 
reactive form of the atom passes to the dead, unreactive form, the 
soul of the atom escapes at the moment of its death, for a ray of 
light leaves the dying atom and travels onward in space, until per- 
haps it encounters and is absorbed by some other dead hydrogen 
atom, which it again raises to life by thus giving it a soul. What 


12 CHEMISTRY OF GREATEST MIRACLE 


every few years just as entirely as we ever shall. 
That is, in the course of a few years every particle of 
our bodies becomes part of the soil and air as com- 
pletely and in the same way as when we are buried. 
We are dying all the time, sometimes rapidly, some- 
times slowly, but always surely. If we should, for 
a few minutes, cease to die we should cease to live. 
That is, if we should cease to throw off the waste mat- 
ter from our organism we could not receive new and 
energy-bearing matter from the plant and animal world. 

Suppose a miserly man should say to himself: 
“What is the use of spending money for more food? 
I will not waste my substance by throwing it out upon 
the air with every breath. I will simply keep what I 
have, for I am perfectly satisfied with it.” The man 
would be dead in ten minutes, poisoned by his own 
breath. We can only gain when we spend. “He that 


is this soul? It is a minute portion of the luminiferous ether; of 
time and space; of eternity and infinity. 

“For us it is oxygen which thus summons the dead from the tomb; 
which vitalizes the dead molecules and atoms. The energy is 
stored in certain of the atoms of the molecules of protoplasm in 
the form of widened orbits of rotation of the electrons. It is this 
which gives them the power of reacting and of passing back to 
the dead. When such electrons fall back to more stable con- 
figuration, the atom and molecule reverts to the dead and inert 
form such as we keep in bottles. It is the oxygen, then, which 
vitalizes all animals; but it is from the sun that the vital, radiant 
energy has come. It is in fact the luminiferous ether which has 
made things alive, for the ether is the great storehouse of energy; 
it is itself nothing else than space and time; energy and time. 
Energy is but ether divided by time. Quantity of energy is quan- 
tity of ether per second. So all goes back to the ether; infinity 
and eternity. From it is derived our energy and life.”—PROFESSOR 
A. P. Matuews of the University of Cincinnati in General Cy- 
tology, pp. 28 and 92. 


CHANGING SKINS 13 


loseth his life shall find it.” The molecules we give 
off with our breath come back to us again charged 
with new energy from the central power house, the 
sun. The faster we die the more alive we are. 

Not all parts of the body wear out equally fast. 
The softer and more mobile tissues change most rap- 
idly. The blood changes its composition constantly. 
But even the particles of lime, carbon and phosphorus 
in the solidest bone are constantly being taken out and 
replaced by new ones just as a railroad bridge is re- 
built, piece by piece, without tearing it down at any 
one time. We get entirely new finger nails every four 
or five months, and new toenails once a year. Our eye- 
lashes last us only about a hundred to a hundred and 
fifty days. We get a whole new skin oftener than we 
get new clothes—that is, most of us—for that is re- 
newed every month. The only part of the body that 
is not completely changed in the course of a. few years 
at the longest is the enamel of our teeth, and that is 
why we have those two plagues of humanity, toothache 
and dentists. 

So it would seem that since we are not composed of 
the same material we cannot be the same persons we 
were years ago. According to this view no man ought 
to be held to a contract longer than, say, seven years at 
the most. If a man is arrested for a crime committed 
ten years ago he can easily prove an alibi. He can 
show that every particle which constituted the man who 
did the deed has long since been dissipated and now 
forms part of the air, the sea, and the soil. A man 
never celebrates his silver, or even his tin, wedding 
with the same woman he married. He may call her his 


14 CHEMISTRY OF GREATEST MIRACLE 


wife still, but he is really not married to any part of 
her—except as I said, to her teeth, and perhaps those 
are changed. Speaking from a materialistic standpoint 
a couple ought to have the ceremony performed over 
again every few years so as to stay married. 

Why is it that these things, which are literally true, 
seem to us so absurd? It is because there is a fallacy in 
the idea. It is the fallacy of materialism. We know 
we are the same persons we were last year and the years 
before. Although we may have changed, it is not be- 
cause we have new finger nails, new eyelashes, new 
bones, new everything. ‘That did not change us. We 
know that if every particle of our bodies were sud- 
denly replaced by new particles of the same kind we 
would not know the difference. We would be the same 
persons. In other words the person is something quite 
distinct from the matter which composes his body. It 
is a different body, but the same man. It was Heracli- 
tus, one of the earliest of the Greek philosophers, who 
first saw this and said, ‘“‘The water changes, but the 
river remains the same.” 

We care nothing, really, for the particular atoms of 
carbon, of hydrogen, of oxygen, of nitrogen, that make 
up what we mistakenly call ourselves. Let them go. 
We can get more; or if we cannot we do not want to 
keep these longer. We are not attached to the matter 
of which our bodies are composed. In the course of a 
few weeks or months, what is a part of me may become 
a part of you: “ ’Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave 
to thousands.” 

We see how foolish were the Egyptians, who be- 
lieved that for a resurrection of the individual it was 


MODERN EGYPTIANS 15 


necessary to preserve intact the identical body of the 
man who died; or, to speak more accurately, the last 
of the many bodies which the man had in his lifetime. 
They embalmed this body to prevent it from decaying, 
they wrapped it in multitudinous folds of linen to pre- 
vent it from being damaged, and built over it the pyra- 
mids to shelter it from destruction. The character of 
the protests against the disturbance of the Tutankh- 
amen tomb shows that superstition still lingers. 

Scarcely less grossly superstitious and materialistic 
than the Egyptian is our own treatment of cast-off 
bodies. We put them in elegant caskets to keep for 
a few years the elements from being of further use to 
the world. We transport them long distances that 
their earth may mingle with the earth of some selected 
spot. All this is antichristian in the extreme. If it is 
true that matter composing the bodies of our dear ones 
is sacred to us, we should not let it go to waste during 
their lifetime. We should preserve in mahogany and 
marble the breath, the hair, the nails, and all the ma- 
terial which has formed part of those whom we love, 
and has been cast away. From the standpoint of the 
Bible our funeral customs are heathenish; from the 
standpoint of science they are absurd and injurious; 
yet in opposition to both we still cling to the supersti- 
tions of materialism. 

Our bodies do not belong to us; they are only rented, 
and we are merely transitory tenants. Form is more 
permanent than matter. The person persists while the 
body disappears. At least, we know this is true while 
we live, and we trust it is true when we die. Our bodies 
are part of God’s modeling clay, which he is continually 


16 CHEMISTRY OF GREATEST MIRACLE 


shaping into new and more beautiful forms; never 
throwing any of it away, never wasting it, never leaving 
it long idle. The vain thought of the pyramid builders 
that they would baffle God’s plan and prevent the clay, 
which once formed the body of Cheops, from being 
ever again of use has proved fruitless. The clay of the 
great Pharaoh has passed through thousands of trans- 
migrations in plant and animal and mineral, more won- 
derful than the path of the soul described in the Egyp- 
tian Book of the Dead, since it was first placed in what 
the priests of the day called its “eternal habitation,” 
the most substantial structure ever raised by the hand 
of man, the Great Pyramid. 

Continuously, in and out, over and under, circle the 
elements; never at rest, never the same, all bent on the 
mission appointed them before the creation of the 
world. Never faltering, never deviating, each atom fol- 
lows the path through empty space marked out for it 
millions of years ago; a path so complex that no mathe- 
matician can calculate it for the thousandth part of a 
second, yet so regular that no variation can be detected 
in years. Back and forth without stopping moves the 
shuttle of matter, eternally weaving the living garment 
of God. No eye can follow its swift movement, no 
imagination can conceive it, but all that is, is what it 
seems to be. 

As Jacob on his pillow of stone saw in his vision a 
ladder with angels ascending and descending on it, so 
we, with our vision clarified by science, can see the 
atoms as the angels, the messengers of Almighty God, 
ascending and descending through the scale of life, now 
carried about by the air, then washed down by the rain, 


THE COMMONPLACE OF MIRACLE 17 


then buried in the soil; then caught up by the hungry 
rootlets and carried through the sap and stored in the 
seed or the fruit; then rising to a fuller life in some 
animal; then caught up and made part of the mecha- 
nism of thought and feeling in man; then cast out with 
the breath to begin again their wanderings; obedient to 
God’s laws whether in high or low estate, equally doing 
God’s service whether in the brain of a philosopher or 
in the body of a microbe or buried in a rock, apparently 
useless and forgotten for thousands of years. So for- 
ever is repeated the miracle of the Garden of Eden 
when God first formed man out of the dust of the 
ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of 
life and man became a living soul. 


I fear not Thy withdrawal; more I fear, 
Seeing, to know Thee not, hoodwinked with dreams 
Of signs and wonders, while, unnoticed, Thou, 
Walking Thy garden sti'l, communest with men, 
Missed in the commonplace of miracle. 

LOWELL. 


THE SPIRITUALIZATION OF DAILY LIFE 


Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatever ye do, do all for 
the glory of God—I Corinthians 10:31. 


THERE are two ways of looking at life that are com- 
mon and erroneous. One is the materialistic, in which 
people are so absorbed in their daily cares and trials, 
or in their sordid aims and schemes, that they never 
have time nor inclination to look beyond them. They 
spend their time raking over their own muck-heap with- 
out ever so much as glancing upward. They love the 
world, its work, and its pleasures. They smile incredu- 
lously when we would tell them of another and a 
spiritual world. 

The other class, that may be called of nobler mind 
than the first, are still mistaken in their view of life. 
They know of the spiritual world and long to live in it 
wholly. They have had the heavenly vision, and hence- 
forth despise everything earthly. They have looked on 
the sun, and their eyes are dazzled so that when they 
look down to earth again it seems very dark and 
gloomy. By contrast with their high ideals, the reali- 
ties with which they are surrounded seem poor, cheap, 
mean. Nothing earthly is worth while. All their ef- 
forts are to escape from the world, and since they can- 
not yet enter a higher they seek to separate themselves 
from this one as far as possible, lest they become con- 
taminated. Their conception of religion is as a sort of 


ecstasy, lifting them out of their daily life; not helping 
18 


DAILY BREAD RELIGION 19 


them in it. Everything religious must be kept sepa- 
rate from everything secular. Religion put to practi- 
cal use would be to them a degradation; like Pegasus 
employed as a plow horse. Their religion must be in- 
sulated from daily life lest it should leak away, like 
electricity. Religion must be confined to a separate 
place, special days, a different language, and particular 
exercises. Now this latter class is far above the first. 
They do see the spiritual, but they do not see its rela- 
tion to the material. They have religion, but they 
don’t use it. That is a great mistake; for that is what 
religion is for. It is practical. It is intended for every- 
day use. It is our daily bread, not a Sunday dinner. 
It is not a means of escape from this miserable world, 
but a way of living better in this world, and making it 
less miserable. Religion is something to live by, not 
merely to die by. It is primarily for this world, since a 
large part of what goes to make up our religion will 
probably be useless in another world, for instance, 
almsgiving and churchgoing. The New Jerusalem is a 
city without a church. Those whose religion is confined 
to the church will not be at home in heaven. 

Still the aim of a great many persons is to separate 
religion as completely as possible from life. They have 
done this in many ways. 

First, by confining religion to certain individuals. 
Finding it impracticable for all to live according to 
their ideals, amid the struggles and temptations of ac- 
tive life, it was decided better that a few should be re- 
lieved of these struggles and temptations in order to 
develop the higher life undisturbed, rather than that 
piety should perish from the earth. So some of the 


20 THE SPIRITUALIZATION OF DAILY LIFE 


early Christians became hermits in the deserts or on 
mountain tops or pillars. It was the monastic idea. 
They were called “The Religious” and had nothing to 
do but be good and to pray for those who had not their 
spiritual opportunities. ‘The idea is well expressed in 
a French book I was reading recently, in which the 
monasteries were called the lightning rods of the coun- 
try. They averted the wrath of Heaven just as ten 
righteous men would have saved Sodom. But it was 
found in the Middle Ages that this isolation of a re- 
ligious class results in extravagant and useless piety on 
their part, and that the populace, deprived of associa- 
tion with the more spiritual-minded members, became 
ignorant and immoral. The double standard of moral- 
ity is a mistake. But in our conception of the office of 
the minister we keep much of the old feeling. We hire 
a pastor to do our religion for us. We look upon min- 
isters as forming a class with other ethics and other 
duties than ours. Now it is, indeed, advisable that we 
distinguish by title and position those who have spent 
years in definite ethical work and study, and who have 
been deemed worthy to teach by persons of authority 
having the interests of God’s kingdom at heart. Such 
men should be distinguished from others, however wise 
and good, who have not had this training and indorse- 
ment, just as the law requires a man to have studied 
medicine before he may call himself “doctor.” 

But there is no law of God that does not apply 
equally to minister and layman. If the minister is 
more strictly moral than his parishioners, as he gen- 
erally is, it is not because he is under any obligation to 
be so. Paying a man to be good for you is as bad as 


ALL SORTS OF PUPILS 21 


paying a man to do your praying for you. You might 
as well hire a man to breathe for you. Neither does 
contributing to the support of a minister relieve you 
from the duty of active religious work. That is laid 
upon all Christians alike. It may relieve you from the 
necessity of public and formal preaching, but the most 
effective preaching is not always done from the pulpit. 
It is done in the street, the shop, the schoolroom, to 
an audience of one or two, and from all sorts of texts. 
That ministry we can delegate to no one. 

Neither can you hire a minister to do your thinking 
for you. Every group of Christians should have a man 
of technical theological training; it is a safeguard 
against religious fads and fanaticism. The church is 
right in insisting upon an educated ministry. But, 
after all, every one has to construct for himself his 
own theology. That is the prerogative of the Protes- 
tant, for which our fathers fought and suffered. It is 
the duty of the layman to devote what time he can to 
the study of religion in order to form intelligent opin- 
ions. This needs some insisting upon nowadays, as 
laymen are neglecting the study of theology. 

Another way of separating religion from life is to 
confine it to special days. It has been found necessary 
to a high civilization that certain days be set aside, by 
mutual consent, in which the hurry and worry of busi- 
ness shall cease and an opportunity be afforded for the 
cultivation of the higher life. As in the Middle Ages, 
when war was perpetually waged, the Popes at times 
declared a “Truce of God,” when no fighting was al- 
lowed, so we each week declare a “truce of God” dur- 
ing which our industrial warfare shall be suspended. 


22 THE SPIRITUALIZATION OF DAILY LIFE 


The Jews dedicated Saturday to this purpose, the Chris- 
tians Sunday, the Mohammedans Friday. These days 
were established, in part, as anniversaries, as we have 
the Fourth of July, Memorial Day, and Armistice Day, 
to commemorate our great wars. 

But just as there are people who confine their pa- 
triotism to the Fourth of July, so some persons keep 
their religion in their Sunday clothes. Devotion on 
any other day seems to them incongruous, if not sacri- 
legious. The Sabbath is not an institution of theoretical 
theology, but of practical religion. Its value lies in its 
use. ‘The Sabbath was made for man, and not man 
for the Sabbath.” That is, man keeps the Sabbath for 
his own benefit, not to glorify the institution, or to 
commemorate the creation or the resurrection of Christ. 
Keeping the Sabbath and going to church are not vir- © 
tues in themselves, but means used for the cultivation 
of virtue. 

Then there are those who separate religion from life 
by confining it to particular places and ceremonies, who 
believe that a prayer said in a church reaches God more 
surely than one said in the workshop; that a certain 
spot of ground or building must be used for religious 
service; that particular kinds of clothing, music, in- 
tonation, find special favor in the sight of God by rea- 
son of some mysterious fitness quite apart from their 
appropriateness to the devotional mood, or the reli- 
gious associations connected with them. Under the in- 
fluence of a sixteen-foot organ pipe, one may easily 
mistake the palpitation of his diaphragm for the shiver- 
ing of his soul. 

We are all inclined to separate religion from life by 


IN A STRANGE TONGUE 23 


giving it a special vocabulary of its own. Religious 
phraseology is conservative because we dislike to 
change those forms of speech with which our deepest 
thoughts and emotions are intimately connected. The 
emotions are the foundation of religion, are most easily 
controlled through association, and this is dependent 
upon fixed forms. But the language of everyday life 
changes, and so, in time, it comes to pass that we have 
two languages, a sacred and a secular, hieroglyphic and 
demotic. This would not matter so much if all were 
brought up in the church; but they are not. The ma- 
jority of the people in our country do not understand 
this “church language.”” That is one reason, I think, 
why preaching fails to reach and move those who have 
not been trained in the church. We talk to them in a 
foreign tongue. The greatest revival on record was on 
the Day of Pentecost: that was when every man heard 
preaching in his own tongue, wherein he was born. 

We may think this an insignificant matter, but that 
is because we, who have heard and used this language 
from childhood, do not realize how strange and un- 
familiar it sounds to the world outside, nor how repel- 
lent even a slight quaintness of phraseology is to the 
average man. The popular distaste for poetry and sci- 
ence is because both make use of an unfamiliar vocabu- 
Jary. Read some of our hymns, or listen to sermons, 
with a view to seeing how they would strike you if you 
were not accustomed to the religious vocabulary, and 
had no associations with the words. How much of it 
would you understand, or be attracted by? 

There is a group of artists who paint modern scenes 
with Christ introduced as one of the characters, eating 


24 THE SPIRITUALIZATION OF DAILY LIFE 


at the table of a poor mechanic, in blouse and overalls, 
or healing the sick in a city hospital. Dagnan-Bouveret 
and L’Hermitte so present Christ in modern settings. 
The artists of the Renaissance painted Christ in this 
way, surrounded by their own friends and neighbors. 
Now, however incongruous this may be from an artis- 
tic or historic standpoint, it is religiously correct. Every 
well informed person believes in the historical Christ; 
but Christians believe also in the Christ of today. 
What we need is to get a correct idea of what Christ 
was to his contemporaries, and then imagine what he 
would do if he were living now. Not Jesus the Jew 
of nineteen hundred years ago, transferred bodily to 
our midst, but in the form in which he would appear, 
if he came on earth today, a modern man, without a 
trace of the antique or outlandish in language, dress, or 
bearing. In so far as we can realize that, we are Chris- 
tians knowing Christ. 

We can realize Christ as a God in heaven more easily 
than as a man in the world, especially in our modern 
world. We cannot comprehend the real incarnation; 
how the Word which we reverence could become flesh 
which we despise; how the New Jerusalem can descend 
upon this filthy earth. This mingling of the divine and 
the human baffles our comprehension. We are slow to 
understand that by these metaphors is meant not a 
degradation of the divine, but an elevation of the hu- 
man; the spiritualization of daily life. The unique 
thing about Jesus was that his religion was a 
part of his daily life. Others have preached, perhaps 
as eloquently; none has lived so eloquently as he. His 
position on earth was not so different from ours as we 


SERMONS IN STONES 25 


sometimes think. He was not a priest nor minister, in 
the modern sense. He did not baptize, did not even 
have a church, did not preach regularly. He simply 
went about doing good; teaching informally, casually, 
when there was opportunity, helping people out of 
trouble, denouncing wrong when he thought it would 
do any good. Just what we all have a chance of doing; 
just what we all should do. 

Even his mighty powers were applied to such pur- 
poses as we should apply our lesser ability. The 
miracles related of him were never spectacular, nor pre- 
arranged. They were merely helpful and casual; pro- 
viding a lunch on the hills when the people were tired 
and hungry, assisting fishermen who were out of luck, 
going into the kitchen to help a perplexed and embar- 
rassed housewife when the wine ran low—pure friend- 
liness and neighborliness. | 

He preached, yes, but as willingly from a well-curb 
as from a pulpit. He took a text from the Scriptures 
sometimes, but more often from field and orchard. He 
saw “tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 
sermons in stones, and good in every thing.” There is 
usually some one ready to criticize a modern preacher 
who follows this example. Christ’s favorite place for 
meditation was among the hills and groves. He did 
not often go into the temple to pray, but rather to the 
olive grove. Now there is nothing sacred about olive 
trees. It is a Palestinian equivalent to our apple or- 
chard. No special place, no stated time, no formal 
phrases were sacred to him; all was equally sacred. 

The aim of Christ was not to establish a religion for 
recluses, nor to introduce a new ritual. It was to spir- 


26 THE SPIRITUALIZATION OF DAILY LIFE 


itualize daily life. There are two acts closely connected 
with our animal natures: eating and washing. I have 
heard people object to eating and drinking in public, 
asserting that such processes, as is already the case with’ 
cleansing of the person, should be carried on in private, 
Byron could not endure seeing a woman eat. Marcus 
Aurelius felt that he had reached the height of pan- 
theism when he was no longer disgusted at the sight of 
dirty bath water. Now, it is these two necessary but 
vulgar acts that Christ chose to show forth the highest 
spiritual truths, and which have become the chief cere- 
monials of the church. Baptism is symbolic washing; 
the washing of the body to represent the purification of 
the heart. The communion service is symbolic eating 
and drinking; to represent our daily dependence on 
God for our spiritual as well as our material food. 
These acts that God hath cleansed let not man call 
common or unclean. 

Whether Christ intended eating the bread and drink- 
ing the fruit of the vine, and washing of the disciples’ 
feet to be ritualistic practices of the future church is a 
point on which doctors disagree, and which therefore 
it would be unbecoming, even unsafe, for a layman to 
discuss. It is of no practical importance, anyway, or 
Christ would have been explicit. What he evidently 
did mean is very generally overlooked—to make every 
meal a memorial. It was a consecration, not of the par- 
ticular food eaten by the twelve, or that officially 
blessed in church, but of all food partaken of by his 
followers. ‘For as often as ye eat this bread and drink 
this cup’’—that is, whenever we partake of the articles 
of daily diet—‘tye do show forth the Lord’s death.” 


GRACE BEFORE KISSING cf 


Whenever we eat we are to remember that we receive 
from the same source our spiritual nourishment. There 
is nothing peculiarly sacred about bread and wine. 
They might have been potatoes and tea if these had 
been known then in Palestine. ‘Whether, therefore, ye 
eat or drink, or whatever ye do, do all to the glory of 
God.” 

Sacred days, sacred places, sacred words, are easy 
to get and keep. What we have not but ought to have is 
a sacred everyday life. Let us not keep our religious 
life separate from our ordinary life. Let us mix them. 
We are not, indeed, always in the same mood; some- 
times we are sad, sometimes gay; sometimes serious, 
sometimes frivolous. But these moods are not irreli- 
gious, and we need never part company with religion 
in them. We are not always inclined to ponder upon 
the deeper problems of life and destiny, nor is it desira- 
ble that we should be; this is not the whole of religion. 
But we should not go where we cannot take God with 
us; nor do anything upon which we cannot ask his 
blessing. 

We may ask God’s blessing upon the gayest feast. 
Charles Lamb said he felt more inclined to give thanks 
when he opened a new book than when he sat down at 
the table. He would be quite right in doing so. There 
is a story told of a Puritan divine who asked a blessing 
and returned thanks before and after receiving the 
first kiss from his sweetheart. If that strikes us as 
ludicrous the fault is with us, not with the divine. Ifa 
man cannot combine his religion and his love-making, 
it indicates that the one or the other is of the wrong 
kind. 


28 THE SPIRITUALIZATION OF DAILY LIFE 


We are not purely physical nor spiritual, but a com- 
pound of both, and we must submit to our conditions. 
Browning in a beautiful simile, too long to quote, repre- 
sents man as a swimmer immersed in the water and 
supported by it—as we are supported by the material 
world—but he can get his head up into a purer and 
finer atmosphere to breathe. As soon, however, as he 
struggles to leave the water, he sinks beneath the sur- 
face instead. So, in order to breathe the air, he must 
remain in the water. 

We must learn to use both the spiritual and the 
material, to see the divine meaning in nature. We need 
greater faith in God; not a distant God, distant in time 
or in space, but a God who is not far from any one of 
us; for in him we live and move and have our being, 
apart from whom we are literally nothing. We must 
believe in the Immanent God, great enough to hold the 
world in its orbit, and great enough to teach the tad- 
pole how to swim; a God who does not keep himself 
apart from this world which we call bad, but which he 
created and called good. We need the faith that sees 
God, not only in the miraculous, but in the common- 
place; in the rain and the dew as well as in the thunder 
and the whirlwind; which sees “every common bush 
afire with God.” 

So many people have tried their hand at a definition 
of religion, that I also will attempt it. Religion is the 
perpetual realization of God; the spiritualization of 
daily life. 

Christ would not pray that his disciples be taken 
from the world, but that they might be sanctified in the 


HIS KINGDOM ON EARTH 29 


world, working each at daily, trivial tasks, to the end 
that his kingdom should come and his will be done on 
earth as it is in heaven: aiming to make 


Our common daily life divine, 
And every land a Palestine. 


THE CHURCH AS A PROMOTER 


Whereunto shall I liken the kingdom of God? It is like leaven, 
which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the 
whole was leavened—Luke 13: 20-21. 


THE complaint is often made that the work of the 
church is being taken from it by the state and kindred 
organizations. The statement has some justification; 
the complaint has none. One of the functions of the 
church is to discover new duties, to develop new and 
startling extensions of old ethical principles, to apply 
them, and to teach them to the world as a whole. 

In business circles the man who fills this office is 
called the promoter. He is a man well endowed with 
the commercial imagination, who has a deeper insight 
into conditions and possibilities, who discovers new 
openings in business, who starts new enterprises, dem- 
onstrates their practicability, and places them on a 
sound financial basis. 

What the promoter is in the business world the 
church is in the ethical world. It has been and should 
always be the pioneer, the innovator. By the church 
aggressive I mean, of course, that minority, that very 
small minority, which, led by religious zeal, undertakes 
tasks which seem to the world foolishness—for the first 
few hundred years. That any person should devote his 
life to the care of the sick and the permanently dis- 
abled; that buildings should be erected where the blind, 


the deaf, and the insane are housed and well treated; 
30 


CHRISTIAN PIONEERING 31 


that defenseless women and children should be given 
a protecting refuge; that the criminal should find sanc- 
tuary; all these appeared very strange and vain pro- 
ceedings when they were novelties. Now every civ- 
ilized state provides for them on an elaborate and ex- 
pensive scale as part of its ordinary duties. Asylums 
and hospitals, reformatories and humane prisons, all 
such were started by a few men of aspiration and in- 
spiration in the face of ridicule and contempt, but are 
now maintained as a matter of course by ordinary men 
with no higher ideals than the average. Numerous fra- 
ternal and benevolent societies, sometimes composed 
and controlled by men who are not at all religious, are 
doing very efficiently the kind of work which was once 
confined to persons of exceptionally altruistic nature. 
The church is not designed to do all the good work of 
the world, but merely to show how it should be done, 
and the more it can get out of those not in sympathy 
with its newer and higher ideals the better. The great- 
est captains of war and industry have been those who 
could get others to do most of what they wanted done. 

It is not only in religious matters that the church has 
been the leader. The world laughed at the church for 
centuries because it hoarded books and wasted the time 
of those devoted to its service in copying and studying 
the writings of the Greeks and the Romans. Instead 
of cultivating the ancient and honorable profession of 
fighting, these deluded creatures illuminated manu- 
scripts, painted walls and composed music. But finally’ 
when the time came, art, drama, music, and architecture 
burst from the monastic cell as a butterfly from its 
chrysalis, spreading its beautiful wings in the open. 


32 THE CHURCH AS A PROMOTER 


Schools and colleges are now supported by all the 
people. Everybody, whether fond of reading or not, 
recognizes the usefulness of printing presses and libra- 
ries. Once it was only the fanatical missionary who 
took any interest in anthropology, who noted the lan- 
guage of barbarous races, observed their customs and 
preserved their primitive mythology. Now we have 
bureaus of ethnology and societies devoted to the study 
of folklore. It was the church which first recorded and 
regulated marriage; now it is done by the state. Even 
our form of representative government, with its unique 
harmonizing of unity and adaptability, is a gift from 
canon law to civil law. The idea of internationalism, 
the conception of the brotherhood of all men, was a 
religious innovation, which now many secular agencies 
are striving to put into effect. Most of the arts and 
several of the sciences had their origin in religion, 
though both arts and sciences are apt to forget their 
ancestry. 

The church has often fiercely objected to this taking 
over by other organizations of its peculiar functions 
just when they become most profitable and fashionable, 
but this protest was wrong and useless as well. Ideas 
cannot be patented, and no form of trust can monopo- 
lize good deeds. The church must not object to rivals, 
nor expend much energy in getting credit for what it 
has done, but must go on conquering new fields, and 
So prove its reason for existence. 

For the church as a leader there is more demand 
than ever before; for the church as a follower there is 
no vacancy. As a duplicator, as a drag, the church 
looks sadly out of place; but a church with imagination, 


THE ETHICAL INVENTOR 33 


with ideals, will make its own place. The moral world 
is not finite; there are always new lands, new conti- 
nents, to discover. The world will not listen to a church 
which has only platitudes to teach; truths which every- 
body accepts, however little they may be practiced. 
When the world on the whole approves of what the 
church is doing it is a sign that the world has caught 
up with the church and it is time for the church to take 
a step in advance. 

As it may shock some, who have not thought about 
the matter, to have it suggested that there can be any 
progress in ethics, and that the highest morality does 
not consist in following conventional precepts and prac- 
tices but sometimes involves a departure from the 
mores, from the mode and manner of the time, I will 
quote a passage from The Alchemy of Thought, by Dr. 
L. P. Jacks, Principal of Manchester College, Oxford, 
and editor of the Hibbert Journal, for it contains the 
best elucidation of this point that I have ever read: 


We are apt to believe that great good will be done by 
inculcating the precept “Imitate the Good Samaritan.” 
That some good will be done by the mere repetition of this 
precept at appropriate times and by duly qualified persons 
need not be doubted; at the same time it is equally certain 
that much harm will be done by exaggerating the good 
which this precept can do. Nothing, in fact, could better 
illustrate the limitations of fatuous morality and the dan- 
gers of forgetting them. For how are we to imitate the 
Good Samaritan, and what would imitation of him really 
involve? The splendid thing about the Good Samaritan 
was that he refused to imitate anybody. Had his morality 
been of the imitative order he would have done after the 


34 THE CHURCH AS A PROMOTER 


manner of the Priest and the Levite, who were actually 
following approved exemplars of their time and place. So 
long, indeed, as our deeds of charity are mere imitations 
of somebody else, no matter of whom, the principle of our 
conduct is far nearer to that of the Priest and the Levite 
than to that of the Good Samaritan. When he showed 
mercy on the wounded man he was not imitating another 
Good Samaritan who had done the same thing on a pre- 
vious occasion; nor was he remembering some precept 
which had been drilled into him by the masters of his 
youth or the pastors of his manhood. He was the first. 
His action, far from giving effect to any fixed rule that 
might have been taught him by contemporary moralists, 
was a flat violation of the respectable moral opinion of 
that time and place. A person who assists a wounded man 
today and thinks he is thereby imitating the Good Sa- 
maritan is therefore making a mistake, which, though it 
may flatter his self-conceit, vitiates his moral judgment. 
To do this act for the first time, in defiance of the accepted 
traditions of your race, is one thing; to do it for the ten 
thousandth time with the felt approval of the world at your 
back, is another thing. In no relevant sense is the second 
an imitation of the first. All the “subjective” factors of 
the two situations are different. Our pleasant conscious- 
ness that this kind of conduct has been sanctioned by the 
highest authority, ratified by the moral judgment of ages, 
celebrated in art, proved sound in principle by science, and 
commended by the most illustrious philosophers—need it 
be said that of all this there was no faintest glimmer in 
the mind of the Good Samaritan? In place of it there 
was, I suspect, an uncomfortable feeling that if his best 
friends saw that he was after they would cut him for- 
ever. 

How, then, can we imitate the Good Samaritan? We 
imitate him, not by reproducing his act, but by being just 


THE PHARISAIC PUBLICAN 35 


as original, just as creative, just as indifferent towards 
fatuous morality as he was. 

If rules for imitating the Good Samaritan are to be 
framed and “taught” by way of moral education either to 
children or adults, these rules must take the form of telling 
us how to be morally original. And this, it will be ad- 
mitted, is impossible. 

The point is sufficiently important to deserve a second 
illustration from the same source. Were one asked to de- 
scribe the most odious form of hypocrisy conceivable, we 
should surely point to the man who deliberately repro- 
duces the part of the Publican in the parable and deliber- 
ately abjures that of the Pharisee—the man who says in- 
wardly, “I thank thee, O God, that I am not as yonder 
Pharisee. I don’t fast twice a week; I don’t give tithes 
of all I possess, but duly, and at the proper time, I smite 
upon my breast and cry, ‘God be merciful to me, a sinner.’ 
The splendid thing about the Publican—and here he re- 
sembles the Good Samaritan—was that he smote upon his 
breast before any authority had laid it down that this was 
the correct thing for a man in his position to do. Surely 
we are well advised in not imitating the Publican; even 
fatuous morality would shrink from such advice, though 
what other advice it can give is hard to say. 


The problem of the church is the same as that of a 
government, that is, how to secure minority rights with- 
out surrendering majority rule. Progress comes only 
through minorities. Whenever a new idea comes into 
the world it has a majority of 1,750,000,000 against it, 
for a new idea comes into the mind of one man first. If 
they are actively hostile or inertly indifferent the new 
idea is crushed out or dies out before it gets a start. 
To follow Pope’s rule, 


36 THE CHURCH AS A PROMOTER 


Be not the first by whom the new are tried, 
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside, 


would absolutely put a stop to all progress. 

Yet ninety-nine per cent of all the new ideas that 
come into the head of the wisest man are wrong and 
deserve to die in infancy. The question is to find out 
which one is fit to survive. The majority is always 
wrong in regard to the one particular minority that 
holds the better view, yet the majority is always right 
in regard to most of the various other and divergent 
views. 

“New truths begin as heresies and end as supersti- 
tions,’’ says Huxley, and that applies to science, poli- 
tics, and religion equally. ‘‘New occasions teach new 
duties, time makes ancient good uncouth,” says Lowell, 
so ethics must continually progress to keep up with the 
advance of the world. That does not mean the repudi- 
ation of former principles or the loss of earlier gains. 
Comparing a textbook on chemistry or biology today 
with one of fifty years ago, you would hardly think 
that they dealt with the same science. You might 
suppose that the slate had been wiped clean of all the 
old, but if you look more closely you will see that all 
the old facts have been incorporated in the new theo- 
ries and that surprisingly few of the old statements have 
been found to be so false that they had to be discarded. 
Science grows like a snowball, englobing what has 
gone before. 

Science is by definition established truth, yet it is 
continually undergoing disestablishment. Science is 
never so sure of itself as when it is changing its mind. 


IS THE CHURCH LEADING? 37 


Scientists have two functions in the world; to conserve 
and to discover, to hold on to what has been gained and 
to reach out for something new. The two tasks fall 
naturally to men of different temperaments, the first 
to teachers and the second to investigators; rarely 
does a man excel equally in both. 

The history of religion seems to me to resemble the 
history of science, both in its method of progress and 
in the two types of temperament. Happy is the church 
that can keep its priest and prophets within its fold and 
working with reasonable harmony for its advancement. 

Some years ago, when I was on the editorial staff of 
the Independent, we asked our readers to vote on the 
question of who were the greatest living Americans, 
who were the most valuable men among our contem- 
poraries, the real leaders of the nation? In canvassing 
the ballots I was surprised to find that out of more 
than a thousand votes, widely scattered among many 
nominees, there were only three clergymen named, and 
these had very few votes, although the subscribers of 
the periodical were mostly church members. I think 
it safe to say that never at any time in the history of 
the country from the landing of the Pilgrims to the 
death of Phillips Brooks would a referendum of this 
sort have had such a result. This seems to indicate, so 
far as it goes, that the leaders of thought and action 
today are not found in the ministry so much as for- 
merly. 

Professor Van Tyne of the University of Michigan 
has for years been delving into the origin of the 
American Revolution and he finds it chiefly in the non- 
conformist churches. Seventy-five per cent of the pa- 


38 THE CHURCH AS A PROMOTER 


triots who attained distinction enough to leave bio- 
graphical data were Congregationalists and Presby- 
terians. The sentiments and phrases that were em- 
bodied in the resolutions and speeches of the revolu- 
tionists were, he finds, taken directly from sermons. 
Where did Patrick Henry get his radical opinions and 
fiery language? Why, from his pastor. The outburst 
of anti-monarchical sentiment, the challenge of the di- 
vine right of kings, the assertion of the natural right 
of the people to govern themselves, the language and 
ideas that so astonished the ruling classes of England, 
were familiar folk-phrases to the Americans. The revo- 
lution consisted mostly in carrying into effect what 
they had been taught from the pulpit. 

Now, we may safely assume that some other revolu- 
tion is at the present time in the process of incubation, 
some movement that will change the course of our 
history as much as did the separation from the Eng- 
lish crown, though I would not presume to say what 
it will be, or even guess whether it will be in the field 
of politics, industry, social life, economics, education, 
ethics, or religion. But what I want to know is whether 
the historian who writes about that revolution in the 
future will be able to find it forecast in the sermons of 
today. Will he find that the preachers of the present 
were the prophets of the better order of things which we 
trust will be the outcome of the next great change, 
whatever it may be? Will their pulpit utterances be- 
come the slogans of the coming reformation? 

In the intellectual crisis of the present, which comes 
from the sudden influx of novel and unassimilated facts 
and theories from scientific research, we are not getting 


THEOLOGIANS WANTED 39 


the help that we have a right to expect from those who 
now occupy our pulpits, and I fear that we shall get 
still less from their successors. For, either from lack 
of taste or from defect of training, the graduates from 
our best theological seminaries do not seem to be con- 
cerned with such questions. The theological students 
I meet nowadays are good fellows, earnest, energetic, 
devout, ambitious, and liberal-minded. They seem to 
be smartly up-to-date and keenly alive on all topics but 
one, and that is theology. Most of them do not seem to 
have any or any interest in any. By theology I do not 
mean a particular system of dogmatic doctrine but 
rather the habit of thinking about the fundamentals of 
faith and reason, about the metaphysics that lie at the 
base of physics, the psychology that controls character 
and motivation, the personal philosophy that is the 
compass of conduct. It is the schools of science, not 
the schools of theology, that are turning out the thinkers 
in such fields. 

We are in the midst of the greatest revolution of 
thought that the world has ever seen, the Einstein 
theory of relativity, the Planck theory of quanta, the 
chromosome theory of heredity, the hormone theory of 
temperament, the new knowledge of the constitution 
of the universe and of the workings of the human mind. 
These ideas will influence the philosophy, theology, 
religion, and morals of the future as much as the Coper- 
nican theory influenced those of the sixteenth century, 
and the Darwinian theory, of the nineteenth. Such 
questions would have aroused the keenest interest in 
the minds of men like Edwards, Berkeley, Calvin, 
Aquinas, Augustine, or Paul. They would have 


40 THE CHURCH AS A PROMOTER 


delighted to work out their ethical implications. A 
student of engineering or biology will sit up half the 
night discussing these theories, and their application to 
life, but your modern theological graduate is bored by 
them. He has learned how to give the glad hand to the 
strangers at the church door and can teach Boy Scouts 
how they should salute the flag—things that a pump- 
handle or drill-sergeant could do as well—but he is not 
qualified to lead his people through the mazes of modern 
thought. Since sermons have become sociological in- 
stead of philosophical, serious-minded people are going 
elsewhere to get their metaphysics and often getting a 
poor brand of it from unqualified dispensers. When a 
young preacher does touch upon such topics—which 
fortunately is seldom—he is apt to reveal a materialis- 
tic conception of matter that sounds amusingly anti- 
quated to his scientific hearers. 

The Committee of Inquiry on “The Teaching Office 
of the Church” appointed by the Archbishops of the 
Church of England, admitting “the failure of the church 
to obtain a hearing for its message,” ascribed it pri- 
marily to the fault of the theological teaching. The 
Committee on Evangelistic Work reported that “if the 
Church is to preach to this generation an evangel that 
will grip, it must come in some real sense as ‘news’; 
news powerful enough to change the whole mental and 
spiritual outlook.” 

If the church is to be anything more than the Boost- 
ers’ Club of Zenith City there has got to be some hard 
thinking done by those at the head of it during the next 
twenty years. Somebody has got to seize hold of these 
new conceptions and point out their moral applica- 


PRIESTS AND PROPHETS 4] 


tions. Otherwise somebody else will make immoral 
applications of them. Unless the preacher gets accus- 
tomed to deep diving while he is young, he is apt to 
swim shallower and shallower as he gets on in life. 
Unless he has once thought things through for himself 
he will be at the mercy of every passing fad that blows. 
Theological schools ought to teach theology. 

Eloquence of tongue and charm of manner will not 
compensate for want of thought. In time any congre- 
gation will tire of a diet exclusively of boneless sermons 
stewed in cream. 

The living church must have its school of prophets as 
well as its caste of priests; its innovators as well as its 
conservators. Among the ancient Hebrews priest and 
prophet were quite distinct, and indeed often at odds. 
The modern minister is expected to combine the two 
functions, which is difficult if not impossible, for they 
require different types of temperament. The priest is 
the official guardian of the established church. He 
conducts its ceremonies, manages its finances, maintains 
its traditions. It is his duty to transmit to each succes- 
sive generation the winnowed wisdom of the fathers, 
to see that no accent of the Holy Ghost is lost by this 
heedless world. 

The prophet is a man of different character and other 
duty. It is his task to arouse the people against unsus- 
pected sins, to sting them from their apathy and pre- 
vent formalism from putting the church to sleep, to 
apply the eternal principles of righteousness to present 
crises, to point out the consequences of prevailing or 
proposed policies, and raise new standards of ethics. 
He is the radical, the agitator, the nonconformist, the 


42 THE CHURCH AS A PROMOTER 


iconoclast. He does not appeal to tradition; he does 
not rely upon the law or cite precedent. He speaks as 
one having authority, and not as the scribes. But al- 
though he may denounce the established church of his 
time as an obstacle to progress, yet he builds upon it 
for the foundation of his new order and must in turn 
establish some institution of the sort to make his mes- 
sage a permanent power in the world. 

We find a similar differentiation of function in other 
fields: in politics, where we find the spellbinder, who is 
sent around the country in the campaign, and the dis- 
trict leader, who knows his ward man by man and 
keeps the machine running between campaigns; in 
science, where the original genius absorbed in research 
must be supplemented by the teacher who is as much 
interested in his students as he is in his subject. 

In the modern Protestant churches the two func- 
tions and types are distinguished, rather imperfectly, 
by the terms pastor and preacher. The priest, or pas- 
tor, should be a man who is esteemed and loved by all. 
He should be the guide, philosopher, and friend of 
young and old. It is more important that his judgment 
should be sound than that his ideas should be original. 
It is not necessary, and perhaps not desirable, that he 
be a genius, unless a genius in common sense and friend- 
liness. We go to his study, not to have epigrammatic 
eloquence fired at us, but to receive commonplace con- 
solation for our commonplace sorrows and common- 
place correction for our commonplace sins. He must 
be preéminently a practical man, able to manage the 
business affairs of the church. He must conduct the 
services of the church with a dignity and propriety all 


RADIO FOR MODERN PROPHETS 43 


the more required where the ritual is simple and flexible. 
He must know his people, their home life, their busi- 
ness life, their spiritual life. He must have the ability 
of a general or captain of industry to be able to set 
each man and especially each woman where he or she 
can do the most good. 

The prophet, or preacher, may be lacking in some or 
all these virtues and yet be capable of doing a great 
work in the world. It is a pity for a man of eloquence 
and insight to be put out of the pulpit because his books 
do not balance or he cannot remember whether the 
Smith child is a boy or girl. There are so many people 
in the world who can balance books and remember the 
names of the Smith children, and so few who can inspire 
and stimulate us. The preacher of the Prophetic type 
must make bitter enemies as well as devoted disciples, 
as he handles live issues without gloves. He is apt 
to be touchy and temperamental. Carlyle was a typical 
prophet and he was, on the best authority, ‘‘gey ill to 
live wi’. And no matter how great his genius, the 
preacher cannot be relied upon to turn out annually 
fifty-two or one hundred and four sermons of equal 
originality and eloquence. Four new ones a year is as 
much as we have a right to expect from any man. 

For that reason it is not fair to confine the great 
preacher to one pulpit, even in a city where he preaches 
to a procession. To get the best out of both the pas- 
tors should be permanent and the preachers peripatetic. 
Perhaps the radio will prove to be the solution to this 
old problem. By this means we may listen to the best 
preachers of any denomination, or of none, either in- 
dividually or collectively, while the local pastor stops 


44 THE CHURCH AS A PROMOTER | 


trying to compete with them and confines himself to 
the ministry of his flock. 

The fault I have to find with the preachers is that 
they are too unselfish and self-effacing. The modern 
minister is willing to sacrifice to the desires of others, 
not only himself, but the best interests of his church. 
He will allow ‘the enrichment of the service” to the 
point of intellectual impoverishment. He may still sit 
upon the platform but can hardly be said to occupy the 
‘pulpit. He does not even get as much of a chance to 
talk as a toastmaster at a banquet. And if the choir 
wants to display a special anthem he will obligingly cut 
down his sermon from twenty to thirteen and a half 
minutes, or omit it altogether. 

He will surrender his best chance at systematic in- 
struction, the adult Bible class, to a fluent realtor, law- 
yer, or storekeeper, who has no training in what he 
undertakes to teach. Now a devout layman of this sort 
may be able to contribute mightily to the education of 
the congregation by the lessons in practical ethics that 
he has derived from his observation and experience in 
the world of affairs, but it must make a minister miser- 
able to hear him misinterpret Scripture, misrepresent 
historical circumstances, and misconstrue theological 
questions that have been studied for centuries. 

People think they are cheated unless a lecturer gives 
them at least an hour and a quarter. A university pro- 
fessor has fifty-five minutes to devote to the elucidation 
of a single point. The preacher, who has more intri- 
cate and more vital themes to expound and impress, 
should have at least as long. It is a practical impossibil- 
ity to explain and develop a subject in its proper pro- 


BIBLE READING WITHOUT COMMENT 45 


portions in a quarter of an hour. In the days when 
sermons were a power in the life of our people the 
preacher measured his remarks by an hourglass on the 
pulpit, and turned it over if he found he needed more 
time to do justice to his topic and his congregation. 

The consequence of this relinquishment by the mod- 
ern preacher of the essential part of his job is that most 
grown-up Christians nowadays have no grown-up re- 
ligion. The childish ideas and forms that they learned 
—perhaps—in the home or Sunday School are not ade- 
quate to meet the intellectual difficulties and moral 
temptations of after life. Naturally they come to think 
that there is nothing to religion more than what they 
were taught in childhood. 

I call the educational the essential part of the 
preacher’s job, because he is the only person in the 
church who is qualified and trained to do it. Other 
members of the congregation can visit newcomers and 
even console the sick. Theological training is not nec- 
essary to manage the organization and finances. Any 
layman can baptize in an emergency. A justice of the 
peace can marry. But probably there is no one in the 
church who knows so much about the Bible, the his- 
tory of the church, the principles of theology and the 
applications of ethics. There is no use having an 
educated minister if you do not make use of his edu- 
cation. 

The practice or legal requirement of reading pas- 
sages of the Bible in the schools without comment is 
supposed by some of its advocates and opponents to be 
a Puritanical custom. On the contrary it would have 
shocked the Puritans, who required their ministers to 


46 THE CHURCH AS A PROMOTER 


expound the chapter section by section as they read. 
“This form of Scripture-reading was deemed the only 
fitting method by the New England pastors, ‘dumb- 
reading,’ or reading without comment, being supposed 
to savor of the liturgical usages from which they had 
fled.”* If a minister does not give this aid in the 
understanding of the Biblical lesson we might as well 
have a phonograph in the pulpit. 

In comparing the pictures of New York City as it was 
fifty years ago with the New York of to-day the most 
striking difference is in the sky-line. Then the homes 
and buildings were all low, only a few stories, and the 
most prominent edifices were the churches, which raised 
their spires high above all the rest. Nowadays in a 
view of the city the churches are almost out of sight, 
hidden away as they are between and behind the office 
skyscrapers and apartment houses. A stranger judg- 
ing by this picture would say that the churches had 
sunk into insignificance. 

But that would be wrong. The churches are there, 
more of them than ever, larger than ever, busier than 
ever; only they are less conspicuous. They have no 
longer the monopoly of the heavenward impulse. They 
no longer dominate the city, and they may more easily 
be overlooked. | 

The problem of the church is how to make the 
best of the situation and how to maintain religion as a 
vital factor in modern life when it has ceased to be the 
most prominent. This is not necessarily an unfavorable 
condition of affairs for religious progress. When we 


1 Williston Walker, History of the Congregational Churches in 
the United States, p. 238. 


ROOM AT THE TOP 47 


look back over the history of Christianity we find most 
to regret and apologize for in the times when the church 
occupied a commanding position and brooked no ri- 
valry, while the periods when the pure spirit of Chris- 
tianity was most manifest were those in which the 
church was relatively less conspicuous. ‘The church 
does not now suffer from any form of persecution, nor 
does it offer such worldly advantages as to draw to it 
the selfish and ambitious. Freed, then, on the one 
hand from dangers of malice and envy and on the 
other from the greater danger of becoming the tool of 
secular powers, it has the opportunity of developing in 
accordance with its own inner ideals and of achieving 
its own peculiar aims. 

Since the church has been largely relieved of the 
educational and eleemosynary burdens, which it for- 
merly had to bear alone, it may again become the 
pioneer, pressing forward into unexplored territory and 
gaining higher ground. If the church is crowded out 
from its previous occupations, there is always room at 
the top. 


PAINTING THE PICTURE OF GOD 


No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, 
God dwelleth in us... Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the 
Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God—John 4:12, 15. 


Once a little girl was observed sitting on the floor 
furiously drawing a picture with colored crayons on a 
big sheet of cardboard. Her mother asked her: “What 
are you doing?” 

The little girl answered: “I am drawing a picture of 
God.” 

The shocked mother remonstrated: “But nobody 
knows how God looks.” 

The little girl wet her crayon in her mouth and 
dashed it again at the paper as she replied: ‘They will 
when I get through.” 

Here as usual the child reflects in miniature the child- 
hood of the race. The prehistoric cave-dweller, who 
daubed his deity on the rough rock walls in charcoal 
and red ocher, had the same confidence in his ability 
to portray the unseen object of his adoration and got 
much the same result. 

And all through the centuries since, men have never 
ceased in their efforts to depict and describe their ideas 
of divinity, to confine infinitude in the finite form. 
Looking back over the pictorial evolution of theology 
we should discern in the background the African fetish; 
the meteorite fallen from heaven and the fulgurite 


formed by the thunderbolt; the Egyptian dung beetle 
48 


SEEKERS AFTER GOLD 49 


and cat-headed goddess; Pheenician Baal and Astarte, 
divinities of cruelty and lust; Hindu Kali with her 
necklace of human skulls and Siva with his obscene 
emblems; Buddha of the lotus flower and Allah of the 
sword; the many-breasted Diana of the Ephesians and 
Briareus of the hundred arms; the human, all too hu- 
man, gods of the Greeks and Romans; the paternal 
and maternal elements of the Christian iconography; 
the abstractions of the metaphysicians, the ineffable 
visions of the mystics, the mathematical formule of 
the men of science. 

This composite picture, as we decipher it from the 
palimpsest of the past, reminds us of the sketches that 
we see in the museum, where the artist has retained 
every pencil mark that he has made from the first vague 
outlines to the finishing touches, each limb surrounded 
with a haze of false drawing, of strokes astray; but 
out of them has gradually emerged the final form. So 
man works over the canvas on which he is drawing the 
picture of God, all races, generation after generation, 
adding new lines, erasing wrong lines, here a little, 
there a little, revising, rectifying, improving as his 
vision clears and his ideal develops. It is “the method 
of trial and error,” by which the artist, the scientist, 
and the theologian gradually approach the truth. 

Nobody knows how God looks now. But they will 
when we get through. If not the human race will have 
been frustrated in its highest aspiration. 

The history of religion is an incessant struggle be- 
tween iconoplasm and iconoclasm, the alternate making 
and breaking of images of God. Each may be in its 
turn a step in advance. For in all forms of human 


50 PAINTING THE PICTURE OF GOD 


progress it is sometimes necessary to demolish the old 
in order to erect the new in its place. An inferior idea 
of God is often an impediment to the establishment of 
a purer conception. Materialism is always an obstacle 
to idealism. 

The most dramatic scene in this age-long warfare of 
the newer and higher ideal of divinity with the estab- 
lished one was that which took place on the slopes of 
Mount Sinai. After Moses had gone up into the moun- 
tain in search of a new revelation of God the children 
of Israel, in despair of his return, went to his brother 
Aaron and asked him to make them an image of the 
God who had brought them up out of the land of 
Egypt. And Aaron did the best he knew to satisfy 
their natural longing for an object of worship. He did 
what many another religious leader has done, yes, is 
doing even now; for, not having the prophetic fore- 
sight, he turned to the past for his inspiration. He 
melted up their golden earrings and made them a calf 
after the model of Apis. Also following the religious 
precedent of their times, the people worshiped by feast- 
ing, drinking, and dancing naked before their idol. 

In the midst of this orgy Moses appeared on the 
mountain-side bearing in his arms a new manifestation 
of deity, no golden bull, no image of any kind, but a 
plain tablet of stone on which was inscribed a pure 
ethical code, the ten commandments, the first two of 
which prohibited the form of worship which was being 
practiced in the valley before him. 

In the first encounter, as is common in a conflict be- 
tween the new and the old in religion, the old won. 
The tables of stone were smashed. But, as is also usu- 


THE UNBROKEN COMMANDMENTS 51 


ally the case, the victory later turned toward the new. 
Moses ground and burnt the molten calf and made the 
children of Israel swallow it. Then he went back up 
the mountain and got another copy of the ten com- 
mandments inscribed upon the stone. God is very 
patient. Often as we break his commandments he 
writes them over again, word for word the same. How- 
ever we may caricature him in our representations, he 
unweariedly continues to present to us the perfect 
model for our imitation. 

The second edition of the ten commandments became 
the accepted code of the Israelites and has descended 
through them to us. The second of the command- 
ments, forbidding the artists to meddle with theology, 
freed the chosen people from danger of degeneration 
of their ideal of deity through attempts at its materiali- 
zation. 

Some historians attempt to explain the comparative 
purity of Semitic religions by saying that the Semites 
had a natural genius for monotheism. This is nonsense. 
Those Semitic peoples which did allow idols had as bad 
religions as anybody. Judaism and Mohammedanism 
remained pure because they kept literally the law 
against images of any kind. The Jews, like everybody 
else, have a natural tendency to relapse into earlier and 
inferior forms of religion. Their history in the Old 
Testament records a constant struggle against reversion 
to idolatry, and being deprived of idolatrous objects of 
worship by the law, they have regarded the book of the 
law itself with a reverence sometimes approaching 
adoration. 

We are no longer in danger of a relapse into idola- 


52 PAINTING THE PICTURE OF GOD 


try of the older sort, but still the artist has to be 
watched, for he has still power to pervert pure religion. 
The rise of art often means the decline of devotion. It 
is the sculptural and pictorial forms of art that are 
most dangerous to religion because of their inveterate 
tendency toward a crude anthropomorphism. The ar- 
chitectural and musical forms of art are free from this 
and only become injurious when they absorb and dis- 
tract attention from the religion that they are designed 
to serve. Excessive devotion to the art side of reli- 
gion is apt to lead to luxury, exclusiveness, and sensu- 
ousness. It makes religion a matter of pleasurable 
emotion instead of dutiful action. It substitutes feel- 
ing for doing. It exalts esthetics and subordinates 
ethics. 

In the early stages of religion art may be an aid, but 
in later degrees of development art is apt to become 
its enemy. The Greeks could not rise to the heights 
of stoicism because their artists were too clever. Stat- 
uary and poetry constantly recalled them to the crude 
conceptions and low morality of their primitive my- 
thology. Plato recognized this impediment to the higher 
life of his people and so refused to admit to his ideal 
Republic the works of Homer, Hesiod, and A‘schylus 
because they gave false and degrading pictures of God. 

Lucretius, who wrote his poem “On the Nature of 
Things” to abolish belief in all gods from the mind of 
mankind, begins it with a hymn to Venus. The paint- 
ers of the Renaissance made their mistresses the ob- 
jects of adoration to the ignorant multitude by using 
them as models for their madonnas. Savonarola pro- 
tested at the time against the custom of the Florentine 


THE MATERIALISM OF ART 53 


artists of painting pictures of the Virgin in the allur- 
ing guise and well-known features of prostitutes. 

The founders of religions have been men of such in- 
sight that they were able to see the reality behind ap- 
pearances, the eternal in the ephemeral. Their follow- 
ers, lacking their vision, have endeavored to represent 
the spiritual conceptions of their master through the 
symbolism of metaphors and pictures. To do this they 
must call to their aid the artists, who as a class are 
men deficient in imagination, and who, being congeni- 
tally incapable of perceiving the inner meaning of 
things, have in compensation acquired dexterity in de- 
picting their superficial aspects. They concern them- 
selves with form and color, the accidental and temporal 
appearances of objects, and disregard their permanent 
principle and purpose. In fact artists of the modern 
school boldly avow that their pictures have no message 
or meaning whatever and are to be looked upon purely 
as combinations of shades and tints on flat canvas. 
They have deliberately aimed at divesting their pic- 
tures of all intellectual and spiritual content, and have 
been remarkaby successful in achieving their aim. 

Then, too, artists are naturally materialistic and con- 
servative. Matter is their medium and their appeal is 
to the senses. Their ears are deaf to the music of the 
spheres and they hear only air vibration of a frequency 
between 16 and 40,000 per second. Music is the least 
intellectual and most sensuous of the arts. It is in- 
capable of conveying an idea unaided and yet is power- 
ful in arousing emotion. Therefore it is capable of 
carrying and enforcing the ideas imposed upon it by 
words, suggestion, or association, Music is what is 


54 PAINTING THE PICTURE OF GOD 


called in radio the “carrier wave.” Graphic and 
glyptic art is conservative because it uses the familiar 
forms of the past. Painters and sculptors have their 
eyes turned backwards, and it is very difficult to get 
them to comprehend and present the conceptions of the 
present and the ideals of the future. A false and tra- 
ditional way of drawing the human figure, eyes front, 
face profile, trunk front and feet side view, was main- 
tained for thousands of years throughout the history 
of Egyptian art. Artists drew the galloping horse in 
an impossible attitude for thirty-seven centuries, from 
the Mycenzan period down to thirty-five years ago, 
when the motion-picture photographer set them right.’ 
The architects give us public buildings that fit us about 
as well as the hermit crab his shell. For instance, their 
idea of a bank building is a Greek temple, although 
the Greeks detested banking. If an artist wants to 
symbolize modern warfare he paints a sword, if he 
wants to symbolize literature he paints a plume, al- 
though these are not the implements now used in fight- 
ing and writing, and are mostly meaningless to us. 
These obvious observations should not be construed 
as a condemnation of art or a criticism of artists. They 
could not change their natural temperament without 
ceasing to be artists. But it is necessary to see the 
limitations of art to understand why it has been so 
often a drag upon religion and why religious reform- 
ers, such as Moses, Zoroaster, Plato, Mohammed, and 
the Puritans, have viewed it with suspicion as likely to 
pervert spiritual ideals in the portrayal of them. 


1Sir Edwin Ray Lankester, Science from an Easy Chair, Second 
Series, p. 52. 


ART FOR THE UNIMAGINATIVE 55 


We give different meanings to the same word accord- 
ing to our temperament and disposition. Take, for in- 
stance, electricity. To the scientist electricity is E=IR. 
To the practical man electricity is the radio and the 
dynamo. To the artist electricity is a beautiful woman 
flying through the clouds with a wire in her hand. All 
three conceptions are perfectly proper in their places. 
No one of them tells what electricity really is, or com- 
prises all it means to the modern world, but of the 
three there is no doubt that either the conception of 
the electrician, who regards it as a mathematical rela- 
tion, or that of the practical man, who thinks only of 
what it does, is more adequate than that of the artist, 
and if we should allow allegorical figures to take the 
place of mathematical formule in science it would fall 
as low as ever religion did in its most debased period. 

The desire for a pictorial representation of an ab- 
stract idea or a spiritual concept is due to lack of 
imagination. A person of good taste would rather have 
no picture of his mother than one of these “crayon 
portraits” that are thrown in when you buy the frame. 
So, too, any one endowed with spiritual insight feels 
a repugnance at the sight of any portrait of God, for 
even one by the best of painters is rather a hindrance 
than an aid to devotion. 

Pictures of Jesus may give us a more realistic idea 
of his life and times, and so aid us in the interpreta- 
tion of his teachings. But generally the aim of the 
artist is not historic accuracy but more or less symbolic 
representation. Then, too, the points selected for em- 
phasis are necessarily the less essential elements and 
therefore tend to distract attention from the important 


56 PAINTING THE PICTURE OF GOD 


lessons. The larger proportion of the pictures of Jesus 
present him at his birth and death, but Jesus as a babe 
in arms or tortured on the cross gives us no idea of 
the gospel taught by Jesus as a man. 

A good example, or rather a bad one, of what the 
artist does to theology when he has a free hand is one 
of the most recent pictures of God in one of the finest 
of our public buildings by one of the greatest of Ameri- 
can painters, Sargent, in the Boston Public Library. 
Here the dogma of the Trinity is represented by three 
ugly men wearing a single suit of clothes. Whatever 
conception we may get from the Gospels of the person- 
ality of Jesus, certainly the least unlike is a Byzantine 
king with a gilded plaque around his head, holding up 
his fingers to symbolize a doctrine, as though he were 
a deaf and dumb man. The only “proof text” I can 
think of giving any ground for depicting him as a 
Byzantine king is the parable of the unjust judge. If 
this conveys any idea at all it is a wrong idea. The 
real meaning of the second commandment is “Thou 
shalt not bear false witness against thy God.” 

Possibly all the pictures of God that have been made 
since the world began, horrible or grotesque as some of 
them seem to us, had in their prime conception some 
sincere religious motive. Perhaps we might go so far 
as to say that they conveyed in the language of their 
time an idea of some real aspect of the manifold mani- 
festations of divinity. The savage makes his mumbo- 
jumbo so hideous and cruel that he is almost frightened 
at it himself, still more his tribe who have not seen the 
image in the making. But the fear of the Lord is the 
beginning of knowledge, for out of fear grows awe, and 


ANGELS AND AVIATORS +7 


out of awe reverence, and out of reverence devotion. 

Two things we should do in regard to all the ancient 
idols, whether Baal the cannibal or Balder the beauti- 
ful: we should recognize their intent and therefore ap- 
preciate them; we should recognize their inadequacy 
and therefore reject them. He who overthrows an idol 
is more pious than he who erected it, provided he has a 
better image ready to put in the emptied niche. 

The first sculptor who put wings on the statue of 
his god—I do not know if he were an Egyptian or a 
Babylonian—meant well, and perhaps did well at the 
time, though the harm he did lasts to this day. His 
theology was better than his anatomy. At any rate 
he was wiser than the other artists of his time who put 
the head of a dog on the body of a man. He made 
angels a little higher than man, and in so far he was 
right. Doubtless there were some standing about to 
criticize that no one would have ever seen a man fly. 
To which the artist retorted, by his statue if not by 
his voice: “Never mind. Men ought to be able to fly 
and sometime they will.” He was right and those of 
little faith were wrong. On the wings of the airplane 
men have risen to the level of the ancient gods who 
differed from man only in having the power of flight. 
But the aviator, now we have him, does not appear to 
us an angel. Sometimes indeed quite the opposite, as 
when he sails over a city and rains down fire and brim- 
stone on the just and unjust alike. 

Probably the first airmen who dropped into an Afri- 
can oasis or sailed over the Afghan mountains were 
adored as divine. But why do we not hold the aviator 
to be a god? Simply because our conception of deity 


58 PAINTING THE PICTURE OF GOD 


has risen faster than the flight of man. The abode of 
the gods was once placed on Mount Olympus, which 
was less than ten thousand feet high. Modern airmen 
have gone up three times as far, but found heaven still 
above them. The thoughts of men have widened with 
the process of the sun. 

The other day I stood before a modern painting of 
an angel, a gorgeous creature with wings that outshone 
the peacock. An eminent scientist came up and looked 
at it too; finally he said: “How can we expect our 
young people to come into the church when it implies 
believing in such anatomical monstrosities as that!” 
Here is the curious case of an unknown heathen artist 
who lived some ten thousand years ago blocking the 
door to a modern American church in the twentieth cen- 
tury. Such a winged man is as unbiblical as it is unbio- 
logical. It is a conception foreign to both Christianity 
and Judaism. The angels whom Abraham and Lot en- 
tertained unaware ’* certainly did not wear wings, nor 
apparently did those who sat at the sepulcher of Jesus. 
When the angel of the Lord—or was it the Lord him- 
self?p—appeared under the oak of Ophrah and Gideon 
prepared a meal for him,? when Raphael hired out to 
guide Tobit to collect a debt and get a bride at Rages 
in Media,* they were obviously featherless bipeds. 
Angels of the sort invented by the artists of the Dark 
Ages would have created as much commotion in Pales- 
tine as did the one the Vicar shot down as told by 
Wells in The Wonderful Visit. 

2 Genesis 18 and 19. 


3 Judges 6: 11-22. 
#Tobit 5:5. 


A ONE-INCH BOOKSHELF 59 


What gives the Bible its unique value and its incom- 
parable position among the sacred books of the world 
is that it is not a single book but the long literature of 
a race, not the work of one author like the Koran, or 
the product of a particular period like the Rig Veda, 
but a collection of the best thought of the most devout 
of the Hebrews for some three thousand years. The 
Bible is a history of that process that some call the 
progressive revelation of God, and others, meaning 
much the same, the evolution of religion. We could 
not well spare any of its pages, even those that seem 
to have no message for us, for we should miss a link 
in the chain. 

To those who read the Bible in its historical aspect, 
and not as a unified code of doctrine, its apparent in- 
consistencies cause no uneasiness. When we find that 
different ages held different ideals and deduced from 
them different conduct, we should endeavor to under- 
stand and do justice to them all, without trying to force 
a false consistency. The milestones of the highway are 
of value just because they are not in the same place. 
We must not misinterpret the Bible in defending it. 

One of the most instructive lessons we get from the 
Bible is to observe the various pictures of God as we 
turn over its pages from Genesis to Revelation. Here 
is one of the early pictures: 


And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, 
they found a man that gathered sticks upon the sabbath 
day. 

And they that found him gathering sticks brought him 
unto Moses and Aaron, and unto all the congregation. 


60 PAINTING THE PICTURE OF GOD 


And they put him in ward, because it was not declared 
what should be done to him. 

And the Lord said unto Moses, The man shall be surely 
put to death; all the congregation shall stone him with 
stones without the camp. 

And all the congregation brought him without the camp, 
and stoned him with stones, and he died; as the Lord com- 
manded Moses.® 


Contrast that with this picture of fifteen hundred 
years later: 


And it came to pass, that he went through the cornfields 
on the sabbath day; and his disciples began, as they wert, 
to pluck the ears of corn. 

And the Pharisees said unto him, Behold, why do they 
on the sabbath day that which is not lawful? 

And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, 
and not man for the sabbath: 

Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath.® 


The priestly picture of God is very different from 
that of the prophets. Four of the five books of Moses 
are largely taken up with an elaborate system of injunc- 
tions and taboos, of sacrifices and sabbaths, and the 
most appalling penalties are threatened‘ by Jehovah 
upon any who may fail to follow the law and ritual in 
every detail to the end of time. Yet a few centuries 
later Isaiah, speaking in the name of the same Lord, 
uses very disrespectful language of these sabbaths and 
sacrifices: 

5 Numbers 15: 32-36. 

6 Mark 2:23-24, 27-28. 

7 Deuteronomy 28:15-68. 


VAIN LIBATIONS 6} 


“What care I for all your lavish sacrifices?” 
the Eternal asks; 
“T am sick of slaughtered rams, 
of the fat from fatted beasts; 
the blood of bullocks and of goats 
is no delight to me. 
Who asked that from you, 
when you gather in my presence? 
Crowd my courts no more, 
bring offerings no more; 
the smoke of sacrifice is vain, 
I loathe it; 
Your gatherings at the new moon and on sabbath, 
I cannot abide them; 
Your fasts and festivals, 
my soul abhors them. 
They are a weariness to me, 
I am tired of them.” ® 


The prophet Amos, too, reveals to us a God who cares 
nothing for ritualism and much for righteousness: 


“Your sacred festivals? I hate them, scorn them; 
your sacrifices? I will not smell their smoke; 
You offer me your gifts? I will not take them; 
you offer fatted cattle? I will not look at them. 
No more of your hymns for me! 

I will not listen to your lutes. 

No, let justice well up like fresh water, 

let honesty roll in full tide. 
I know your countless crimes, 
your manifold misdeeds— 


SIsaiah 1:11-14 (Moffatt’s version). 


62 PAINTING THE PICTURE OF GOD 


browbeating honest men, accepting bribes, 
defrauding the poor of justice.” ° 


Here is a picture of God as he was known in the time 
of Elisha: 


And he went up from thence unto Bethel; and as. he 
was going up by the way, there came forth little children 
out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go 
up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. 

And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed 
them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two 
she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children 
of them.?° 


Compare that picture with this, some nine hundred 
years later: 


Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know 
not what they do.** 


Hear the prayer of David, “the man after God’s own 
heart,’’ asking vengeance upon his enemies: 


“Grant that his children be fatherless, 
And that his wife be a widow, 
Up and down may his children go begging, 
Expelled from their desolate home. 
May all that he owneth be seized by the creditor; 
May strangers plunder the fruits of his toil. 
May none extend to him kindness, 
Or pity his fatherless children.” }* 
8 Amos 5:21-24, 12 (Moffatt). 
10 1T Kings 2:23-24. 
11 Luke 23:34. 
12 Psalm 109:9-12 (McFadyen’s trans.). 


TOO MUCH OLD TESTAMENT 63 
And then listen to this: 


But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that 
curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for 
them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.?® 


I was talking today with a Y. M.C.A. secretary who 
had served with the American army in France and I 
asked: ‘What in your opinion was the real cause of 
the Great War?” The answer was: “The mistake of 
the early Christians of incorporating the Old Testa- 
ment in the canon of Scriptures on a parity with the 
New. If they had treated it as the Council of Trent 
decided to treat the Apocrypha, to be read for edifica- 
tion, but not for the establishment of doctrine, the 
Christian Era would have been spared much bloodshed 
and persecution.” 

This is not so heretical a view as it may seem to 
some. In The Church Militant of the diocese of Wash- 
ington for May, 1925, the Rev. Clarence W. Whitworth 
in planning a curriculum for church schools in the 
rural districts says: 


You will notice that I have left no place for the Old 
Testament. This is not an accidental omission. I am 
profoundly convinced that the Old Testament is the source 
of most of our spiritual disasters. While it has undoubted 
spiritual value for the mature mind, it is so beset with 
difficulties and even absurdities that it is almost certain to 
create confusion and doubt. If it is handled at all, it must 
be handled honestly and fully with all the assured results 
of criticism and scientific research frankly dealt with. All 


13 Matthew 5: 44. 


64 PAINTING THE PICTURE OF GOD 


this can be done only with a mature mind. As for using 
the “hero stories” of the Old Testament as a child’s intro- 
duction to religion, I can imagine nothing more calculated 
to make heathen out of children, and their general use is 
doubtless why most of our children are heathen. 


A little girl, reading her way for the first time 
through the Old Testament, was much shocked at strik- 
ing some such passages as I have quoted. She took her 
perplexities to her father, a clergyman, who, without 
endeavoring to explain them away, turned her atten- 
tion to passages of a different tenor in the New Testa- 
ment. After reading these she came to her father much 
relieved in mind, and, climbing up into his lap, ob- 
served: “Papa, God grew better as he got older, didn’t 
he?” 

That is one way of looking at it, certainly. Another 
is that men got a clearer vision of Him in the course of 
time. The imperfections we discern in the Deity are 
due to defects in our own eyesight. 


Our little systems have their day; 

They have their day and cease to be; 
They are but broken lights of thee, 
And thou, O Lord, art more than they."* 


No one need have his faith shaken by the fact that 
there are so many and so different pictures of God. 
None of them can be complete and correct. None of 
them is perhaps altogether false. Their diversity is not 
only evidence of the sincerity of the artists but also a 
proof of the reality of the object they depict. 


14 “Tn Memoriam.” 


MANY PICTURES, ONE GOD 65 


The teacher of a drawing class will arrange his stu- 
dents in a ring and set a chair in the middle for them 
to sketch. Every picture is different, if it be true. The 
legs are of different length, the rungs have different 
angles, the seat has a different shape. If the teacher 
finds any two drawings just alike he knows that one of 
the students is a cheat or a liar. He either has copied 
from his neighbor or has drawn the chair from his 
imagination. He has not depicted truthfully what he 
actually saw but what he thinks he might have seen if 
he had sat somewhere else. No picture of the chair in 
all its aspects has ever been drawn or ever can be, for 
no man has ever so seen it or can see it. The real 
chair as a whole is invisible to mortal eyes, like all real 
things. Mortal eyes can see only the surface and only 
one side of that at a time. 

So it is in theology. If all the pictures of God in the 
world were alike, we should have good ground for 
doubting the existence of God, for we should know that 
all the pictures were blind copies of one, and the man 
who made that one might have invented a fictitious be- 
ing. But since men of the most diverse minds in all 
ages and in every land have professed to have had some 
sort of vision of God, and have tried in their various 
ways by pen or pencil to depict what they saw, we must 
believe that there is a reality behind all these repre- 
sentations. More than that, we can get quite a clear 
conception of that unknown God whom all men ig- 
norantly worship if we diligently study the multiform 
pictures of him that have been drawn by the priests 
and prophets, saints and sages, mystics and philos- 
ophers, poets and artists, of the last six thousand years, 


66 PAINTING THE PICTURE OF GOD 


And, chiefly, its divinest trace, 
In Him of Nazareth’s holy face. 


We can discern in them certain common traits by 
critically comparing and contrasting them, rejecting 
some as worthless or imitative, accepting others at full 
face value so far as they go. For we find that God 
cannot be completely portrayed in any canvas, any 
block of marble, any book. After all our labor we 
come to the conclusion that God is essentially ineffable 
and invisible and above all human comprehension. Can 
man by searching find out God? Yet the search is not 
in vain. 

“No man hath seen God at any time.”’** Yet we 
are told in the same volume*® that Moses, Aaron, 
Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel 
saw him at Horeb. Jacob named the place of his 
wrestling Peniel because, as he said, “I have seen God 
face to face, and yet I am alive!”**’ But when God 
spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai he said: ** “Thou canst 
not see my face: for there shall no man see my face 
and live.” So Moses was put in a cleft of the rock and 
covered with the hand of God till he had passed by. 
“‘And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see 
my back parts; but my face shall not be seen.” Yet 
it was because Moses did not know how God looked 
that he was warned against iconographic representa 
tions: 


15] John 4:12. 

16 Exodus 24: 9-11. 

17 Genesis 32:30 (Moffatt’s version). 
18 Exodus 33:20, 23. 


UNCONSTRUCTIVE CRITICS 67 


You saw no shape on the day when the Eternal spoke to 
you out of the flames at Horeb; beware, then, of depraving 
yourselves by carving an idol in the shape of any statue, 
either male or female, or like any beast on earth, any bird 
that flies, any insect crawling on the ground, or any fish 
in the sea; beware of looking up to the sky and then, as 
you see the whole host of heaven, the sun and moon and 
stars, letting yourselves be allured to bend in worship of 
them. The Eternal your God has allotted them for wor- 
ship to all nations under the broad sky, but the Eternal 
took you and lifted you from the iron furnace of Egypt, 
to be a people of his own, as it is today.}® 


Some say that the higher critics have gone too far. 
It seems to me that they have not gone far enough. 
We chemists regard analysis as merely the first step 
toward synthesis. We take compounds apart, not from 
idle curiosity to see what they are made of, but in 
order that we may put the parts together again in some 
new and better way. Children tear up books for the 
fun of it and leave the floor all littered with scraps of 
paper for somebody else to pick up. I don’t begrudge 
the biblical critics their fun, but I do wish that some- 
body would pick up their tatters and put them to- 
gether and make something out of them. Perhaps that 
is not their duty but the job of the theologian. But we 
seem to be short of theologians nowadays, although 
they were never more needed. 

It is very ungrateful to find fault with the scholars 
who have devoted their lives to the elucidation of the 
Bible, toiling in the trenches under a tropical sun or 
moiling over manuscripts in a museum. We must ad- 

19 Deut. 4: 15-20 (Moffatt’s version). 


68 PAINTING THE PICTURE OF GOD 


mire the ingenuity with which they run down every lit- 
tle clew afforded by the forms of words or the style of 
writing. It is to their labors that we laymen owe the 
opportunity, that no previous generation ever enjoyed, 
of getting close to the meaning of the text through 
translations and of understanding its historic setting. 
But it does seem to me that by long concentration of 
their gaze upon the page they sometimes become a bit 
nearsighted. They are too modest in thir aims, too 
low in their ambitions. There is something higher 
than higher criticism. 

To be specific in my criticism of the critics, they are 
too much absorbed in questions of authorship. From 
a scientific point of view this seems absurd because it 
makes no difference who wrote a thing if it is true, 
and if it is not true it matters still less.?° If some censor 
should go through a chemical library and blot out the 
name of every chemist in every book, it would not make 
any material difference in the value of the volumes. 
It would merely bother us in looking up references. 
No chemical fact would be lost. 

Religion is real, whoever wrote about it. The Chris- 
tian experience is verifiable by any one who cares to 
try it. What we have learned about the ways of God, 
whether we have got it from inspiration or from inves- 
tigation, whether we have obtained it secondhand from 
books written by fallible men or have derived it directly 
from God’s own book of Nature, has become our per- 


20 The proof-reader queries this, but on reflection I will leave 
it as I wrote it. I mean that if what you are working on turns out 
to be wrong you not only get nothing but are out your labor; so its 
value is a minus quantity. 


THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD OF JESUS 69 


manent possession and may be substantiated at any 
time. 

If a student browsing about the chemical library 
comes across something that he does not believe and 
takes it to the teacher, the teacher does not say, “Look 
at the name of the author and doubt it if you dare.” 
No, he says, ‘Go into the laboratory and try it for 
yourself.” 

That is the scientific method, and that is the method 

of Jesus. “If any man will do his will, he shall know 
of the doctrine whether it be of God or whether I speak 
of myself.” John sent two of his disciples to Jesus to ask 
if he were the Christ: “Then Jesus answering said unto 
them, Go your way, and tell John what things ye have 
seen and heard.” ** It was the pragmatic test to which 
he appealed, how his religion worked, the severest and 
the certainest test in the world. Christianity, in so far 
as it is truly Christian, rests upon the same solid foun- 
dation as chemistry. 
_ Fortunately most of the books of the Bible are 
anonymous, and I am glad to see that the labors of the 
critics have made even more of them anonymous by 
casting doubt upon their putative authorship. That 
gives the books a chance to be considered upon their 
merits without prejudice for or against by reason of 
the name traditionally attached to them, and it leaves 
us free to devote our time to the more important ques- 
tion of what they mean to us and how we can apply 
them. 

If I am shown the veritable desk on which Jefferson 
wrote the Declaration of Independence I look at it with 

21 Luke 7:22. 


70 PAINTING THE PICTURE OF GOD 


curiosity and even experience a momentary thrill. But 
I do not linger over it longer than sixty seconds, be- 
cause the question I am interested in is not whether 
this is the actual desk or a forgery, but whether the 
Declaration is true or not. I do not mean whether the 
charges against King George are exaggerated or exact, 
for that is a purely historical question of no practical 
importance today; but when Jefferson wrote, “All men 
are created equal,” did he state a fact, and, if so, how 
can we secure the “‘inalienable rights” to which we are 
all entitled? Iam quite sure that Jefferson would like 
to have us look at it in this way. 

This is what I mean when I say that the biblical 
critics do not go far enough to suit me. For instance, 
I have just quoted Genesis 32: 30 on Jacob’s wrestle at 
Peniel or Penuel. I look it up in Bacon’s Genesis of 
Genesis and I find that he says that the passage is in- 
terpolated by “EE, an Ephraimite prophetic writer, circ. 
750 B.C.” in a document mainly by “J, a Judean 
prophetic writer, circ. 800 B.c.”’ All right, Dr. Bacon, 
I take your word for it, not being able to read the 
original and not having any other higher critic at 
hand. But if E took the trouble to interpolate this 
passage he must have thought it important, and maybe 
it is. He doubtless believed it, and I had just as soon 
trust E as J, not knowing either of them and both hav- 
ing lived a thousand years after the events they nar- 
rate. Some critics say that the wrestling with the 
angel was an allegory and that Jacob himself was a 
mythic eponym. But that does not settle the question 
even if I accept that view. The writer of that pas- 
sage, whether he was E or J or X or Y, was real, even if 


NEW LAMPS FOR OLD 71 


Jacob was an eponym, for the passage exists. What I 
want to know is what it means when it says that Jacob 
saw God face to face. Is that to be taken literally? 
If Jacob could, why can’t I? How did the writer 
reconcile this passage with those saying that no man 
could see God and live? If he did not believe the op- — 
posing passages, why did not he or some subsequent 
redactor scratch them out when the manuscript passed 
through his hands? 

Each age paints its own picture of God. The deities 
of one epoch become the demons of the next. The 
devas were later called devils. The great god Pan of 
the Romans becomes the Satan of the Christians. 

But God hath not left himself without a witness even 
among the Gentiles. The picture of Zeus in Cleanthes’ 
hymn which Paul quotes with approval ”’ was a higher 
ideal than Jephthah’s conception of Jehovah.** But 
few of the Greeks rose to the heights of Cleanthes and 
Zeus could not on the whole compare with Jehovah, as 
depicted by their respective devotees. Jehovah ap- 
pears from the first as a decent God, although a bloody 
one, while Zeus had a past that he could never live 
down. 

To ascribe wings to God was a primitive inspiration. 
To ascribe. morals to God was not thought of for a 
thousand years after. 

But in recognizing the superiority of the ideal of 
divinity revealed in the New Testament over that re- 
vealed in the Old, we must not ignore the truth that 
resides in the latter. We must not forget Jehovah in 


22 Acts 17:28. 
23 Judges 11. 


72 PAINTING THE PICTURE OF GOD 


our adoration of Christ. We must not let our love of 
mercy obliterate our sense of justice. This needs some 
emphasis now because there is a tendency to blot out 
the severer aspects of the moral law with a smear of 
sentimentality. In law the governor’s pardon follows 
after the judge’s sentence. But we are in such haste 
to assure the sinner of forgiveness that we do not wait 
till he has been convicted of sin. 

Why attempt to make any picture of God if we 
know that the best picture must be to some degree in- 
adequate and hence misleading? Because we must. 
We can convey ideas only by symbols of some sort, 
first pictures, later words; and the more abstract the 
ideas the more essential, although the more inadequate, 
is the use of symbols. 

Xenophanes said that if cattle could paint pictures 
of their gods they would be cattle gods. Very likely, 
and very sensible of them, too. Much better than if 
the cattle worshiped worms. But when man makes 
gods of cattle as he did in Egypt, Assyria, and India, 
he is demeaning himself, rejecting his birthright, re- 
pudiating his race. The worship of the golden calf at 
Horeb was worse than ordinary idolatry; it was also 
backsliding. 

Since man knows no higher creature than himself 
upon the earth he can do no better than to use human 
attributes in describing any higher being. This is what 
the theologians call “‘anthropomorphism,” and the ques- 
tion of the degree of anthropomorphism allowable has 
been the chief point of dispute in religious controversy 
to this day. The tendency is ridiculed by such paro- 


ANTHROPOMORPHISM IN SCIENCE 73 


dies as: “An honest God is the noblest work of man.” 
‘(Man created gods in his own image, in the image of 
man created he them, male and female created he 
them.” 

But so long as man remains manlike his ideas will 
necessarily remain manlike. However he may receive 
his vision of divinity, he must put it into words or pic- 
tures or acts before it can be conveyed to others. The 
spiritual ideal must be incarnated in a material form. 
The unknown must be described in terms of the known, 
the abstract in the concrete. 

The same is true also in science. It shows itself in 
biology, physics, chemistry, even mathematics and 
metaphysics. Scientists are by no means so free from 
anthropomorphism as they think they are. I remem- 
ber my teacher in chemistry, Professor Nef of the Uni- 
versity of Chicago, a scientist of the strictest sect, 
would say in describing the transformation of a mole- 
cule that he had drawn on the board: “The atoms are 
uncomfortable when they are in this position. They do 
not feel happy till they have rearranged themselves 
so.” ** Goethe says truly: 


“All natural philosophy is in the last resort only anthro- 
pomorphism. We can at will observe nature, measure, cal- 
culate and ponder it, but it always remains our impression, 
our world. Man always remains the measure of all things.” 


24 As I am preparing this for the press I happen upon another 
example of unconscious anthropomorphism. E. J. Brockman in a 
paper before the Baltimore meeting of the American Chemical 
Society, 1925, says: “It is suggested that the formation of com- 
plex compounds be due to an inherent desire on the part of the 
atom of certain elements to complete its outer shell of electrons.” 


74 PAINTING THE PICTURE OF GOD 


But as man in the course of ages becomes more ac- 
curate in delineating the attributes of Deity he drops 
his crude conception of God as merely a magnified 
man. When this faulty picture of God has been super- 
seded man loses with it certain of his sins. For in- 
stance, blasphemy arises from an incorrect conception 
of God, from crude anthropomorphism. A man may 
shake his puny fist in the face of Omnipotence—if Om- 
nipotence appears as a man like himself in every re- 
spect except size. But if Omnipotence is conceived as 
natural law, as an inexorable and impersonal force, 
then there remains to man no course but humble sub- 
missiveness and teachableness. A man may go up 
boldly against an army of other men but he will not 
beat his head against a stone wall unless he is insane. 
Ajax defying the lightning is an heroic figure because 
he conceived of lightning as jagged arrows in the hand 
of Jove. But when Ajax comes to conceive of lightning 
as a high potential difference in electromotive force be- 
tween the clouds and the earth he no longer shakes his 
fist at it. He puts up a lightning rod. A man may 
curse God if he regards him as a tyrant, but it is im- 
possible to curse the law of gravitation. If God is “the 
invisible King’’ and physical laws merely his fiats, then 
we are tempted to try to disobey them. But if physical 
laws are merely the concise expression of the invariable 
sequence of events there is no fun in defying them. 
As man gets a clearer conception of the character of 
the supreme Being blasphemy becomes not so much 
wicked as simply absurd. 

Law conceived as a command may arouse resentment 
and rebellion. But one cannot get angry at an alge- 


EXPERIMENTAL CHRISTIANITY ay 


braic formula. To the modern mind a natural law is 
not a command, but a key; not a prohibition against 
meddling with the secrets of nature, but a means of un- 
locking them. The marvels of applied science which 
make up our modern life show how much truer is our 
idea of God in this respect than that of the ancients. 
Kepler, when he discovered the law of planetary mo- 
tion, cried: “I think thy thoughts after thee, O God.” 
That we are at last in certain fields and to some degree 
following the line of thought of the creative intellect is 
proved by the experimental verification of our hy- 
potheses. A child solving his problems in arithmetic 
knows when he gets the right answer by finding that 
it works backwards. In the same way we know when 
we have got the right answer to any of the problems of 
nature, for then the rule will work, and work both 
ways, from theory to concrete application and back 
again. 

I hope you will not think I have talked too long and 
tediously on this subject of symbolism. There is no 
question more important to understand, since it is the 
key to the history of religion and the key to other his- 
tories as well. The religious wars—No, there are none 
such; I should say, the wars about religions, have been 
mostly quarrels over symbols; sometimes, sad to say, 
over symbols which had lost their meaning to most of 
the contestants. Symbolism of some sort we cannot 
escape. We can only exchange one symbol for an- 
other, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the 
worse. An explanation is at bottom merely an ex- 
change of symbols. 

It will help to keep us tolerant if we bear in mind 


76 PAINTING THE PICTURE OF GOD 


the possibility of two or more different but equally good 
symbols for the same object, like two words for the 
same idea, or two theories for the same phenomenon. 

A symbol is like a pane of glass, something to be 
seen through, not to be looked at. When it gets old, 
dusty, and opaque, then it becomes the object instead 
of the medium. Successive generations come to the 
window through which their ancestors, or perhaps only 
a single keen-sighted mystic, formerly saw the light of 
heaven. But in the course of centuries the glass has 
darkened, and become obscured by neglect to keep it 
clean, or encrusted with the gold and gems with which 
the pious devotees have adorned it. Still many come 
and kneel before the window and go away pretending 
that they too have seen the heavenly vision; and some 
go away Sneering and, because they see nothing through 
the glass now, they say that nobody ever did, that the 
first man was a liar and all the rest were hypocrites. 

Since symbols quarrel so, and material representa- 
tions misrepresent materially, and idols are hard to 
overthrow when once they get implanted, the safest 
way is that prescribed by the second commandment, to 
make worship aniconic. There are other and better 
means of portraying God than by paint or chisel. 

All truth, wherever gained, adds to our knowledge of 
God. Every tiny gem of hard fact that science dis- 
covers may add to the mosaic picture of God, though, 
since the scientist rarely puts it in place himself, and 
the theologian is apt to ignore it, such tessere mostly 
lie about unused. 

The institutions of society, the church, the home, the 
nation, may be modeled after the divine ideal and may 


GOD MANIFEST IN MAN 77 


be filled with the divine spirit and may be carrying out 
the divine will—or they may be quite the opposite. 
Woe unto us if our government or our business follows 
a false god, if it depicts Moloch instead of God the 
Father. 

But it is not in nature and not in art that we can 
find the best images of God. It is in man himself. As 
we have seen, our idea of God must necessarily be an- 
thropomorphic. Let us then accept this limitation and 
take advantage of it to make humanity theomorphic. 
It may seem absurd that a finite being should aim to 
imitate infinitude. But a tiny pool may reflect the 
whole of heaven, if it keep itself calm and clear and 
peaceful, if it does not allow its own ripples to distort 
the image so cast upon it from above. 

Would you see God? Then ponder the saying of 
Jesus quoted by Clement of Alexandria: “If thou hast 
seen thy brother thou hast seen God.” 

““As many as received him to them he gave power to 
become the sons of God.” Children take after their 
father. Heredity is the only authentic proof of pa- 
ternity. We are asked to make ourselves over in the 
likeness of God. “Glorify God in your body and in 
your spirit.” 

If the Christian be not Christlike he has no right to 
the name. He isa standing repudiation of the father- 
hood of God. 

What kind of picture of God are you displaying to 
the world? 


BLACK AND WHITE 


For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, 
hath shined in our hearts—II Corinthians 4: 6. 


To hear colors and to see sounds is an experience not 
vouchsafed to most of us. Yet we all do something of 
the same kind that is quite as remarkable, we ascribe 
colors to the ethical qualities. Universally do men call 
goodness white and wickedness black. Angels and 
devils, wherever they appear upon the surface of the 
earth, are clothed in these colors with an appropriate- 
ness that seems to be instinctive and inevitable. White 
may be the color of mourning as it is in China. Black 
may be the garb of respectability as it often is with us. 
These are matters of custom. But when it comes to 
ethics all men see alike and never confuse black and 
white. To turn from the power of Satan unto God is 
to turn from darkness unto light. 

Wherefore this certainty about what no man can 
prover Who has seen goodness that he can tell us 
whether it be black or white? If we are endowed with 
an ethical sense, which some dispute, the eyeball is at 
any rate not the organ of it. What reason is there for 
ascribing whiteness to goodness? None whatever. 
But when we reverse the question, and ask is there any 
reason for ascribing goodness to whiteness, we see at 
once that there is. 

For black is the most selfish of Poors and white the 


most unselfish. They correspond then exactly with our 
78 


POLYCHROMATIC ETHICS 79 


conceptions of vice and virtue and the association of 
ideas is inevitable, since our highest ideal of goodness 
is perfect unselfishness, absolute altruism. “Freely ye 
have received, freely give” is the injunction of the 
Master. The white object obeys it literally. All the 
light rays it receives, whatever their kind, whatever 
their source, these it returns in full measure, undimin- 
ished, unimpaired, equally, and in all directions. But 
the black object does just the opposite. What comes to 
it, it keeps. Blue rays, red rays, or any rays between, 
all the colors of the rainbow, all that give beauty to 
the world, when they come to a black surface are ab- 
sorbed and are seen no more. Never again will they 
flash about to gladden the sight and enlighten the mind. 
Their doom is forever sealed. For over the black por- 
tal is written, ‘“Ye who enter here leave hope behind.” 
Black is the Mephistophelean color. It is the Spirit 
That Denies. It is that which retains, destroys, anni- 
hilates. 

Our common parlance is wrong from the point of 
view of the physicist. For black is to him not a color, 
but the absence of all color, while white is a color, the 
color, for it is all colors. A similar mistake was made 
when the electricities were named by Franklin. It now 
seems likely to turn out that “negative” electricity is 
the only electricity there is, and “positive” electricity 
is merely the absence of it. So light is the real thing; 
pure disembodied energy, ever in motion, swifter than 
aught else can be, flying through empty space without 
retardation or deviations. But black is nothing but the 
place where light has been stopped and killed; every 
black object is its funeral pile. 


80 BLACK AND WHITE 


“How far that little candle throws his beams! 
So shines a good deed in a naughty world,” 


mused sentimental Portia, having doffed her lawyer’s 
robe. A trite thought, because a true one, that virtue 
is always to be distinguished by its activity in radia- 
tion, by the brightness and penetration of its beams, 
by its effects upon its environment. It is, at any rate, 
the best text we have of goodness. The particular vir- 
tue Portia had in mind—was it Antonio’s generosity to 
Bassanio or her own skill in foiling Shylock?—gave 
forth its full one candle-power of light. But many a 
16 c.p. incandescent or 1,000 c.p. arc fails to live up 
to its rating when measured by this ethical photometry. 

A bad deed cannot radiate. At most it is a stain, a 
blot, which only becomes visible by contrast, which 
must depend upon its eternal antagonist to give it 
existence. Its influence is local, for the reason that it 
is essentially ungenerous. Its blackness is confined to 
itself. It has no power given it to shed darkness upon 
surrounding objects, as everything white or colored has 
of making all things about it more like itself. 

There is a proverb much heard nowadays that I 
never could see the sense of: ““The pot can’t call the 
kettle black.” Why not, I should like to know? The 
kettle 7s black. It ought to be called black. Who has 
a better right to speak with confidence about the faults 
of the kettle than the pot, which has for years hung on 
the same crane and inhaled the same smoke? Truthful- 
ness is a virtue if smuttiness is a vice. If there is any- 
thing that would make the pot seem less sooty in our 
eyes it is giving us a clear reflection of the image of the 


THE POT AND THE KETTLE 81 


kettle. Shall no one point out blackness anywhere un- 
less he knows himself to be speckless? Would the pot 
rise in our estimation if it followed the custom of its 
critics and said, ‘““The kettle is white, as white as Iam?” 
There is, strictly speaking, neither black nor white in 
this world of ours. There are merely things darker and 
lighter and variously colored. We all specialize in the 
virtues, devoting our attention to such as suit our pur- 
poses. Some of us favor the lower end of the moral 
spectrum and display the red badge of courage. Oth- 
ers cultivate the more delicate vibrations of the blue 
end, purity, constancy, and truth. Most of us are 
prismatic and changeable, flashing forth sometimes one 
color and sometimes another; perhaps in the course of 
a lifetime displaying them all, but never all at once and 
equally in all directions. For the best of us reflect 
brokenly and partially what comes to us from the 
source of all goodness, the Sun of Righteousness. 


FAITH 


Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things 
not seen——Hebrews 11:1. 


EacH profession or school of thought has its own lan- 
guage, its technical terms, its special phrases, that are 
used with facility and understanding by the members 
of that profession but which are not comprehended by 
other people. And whatever is not understood is an- 
noyingly offensive. “Shop talk” is always obnoxious 
to all except the shopmen. We only partially under- 
stand a doctor, a lawyer, or an engineer when he is 
talking on technical subjects. Science is a bore to most 
people, largely because they don’t understand the lan- 
guage. 

Now, of all the sciences, theology has suffered most 
from this lack of popular understanding of the techni- 
cal terms because it is more important that everybody 
should be able to understand a minister than that he 
should understand a botanist or a physicist. I think 
the repellent aspect of theological language has had a 
great deal to do with keeping people out of the church. 
Many a man has fought all his life against a creed 
which he would accept at once if it were translated into 
his own language. 

I propose to give here a non-theological discussion 
of a theological term, the word “faith.” The word is 
largely a theological one but the thing itself is not 

82 


THE FAITH OF A CHEMIST 83 


merely theological. In fact the reason why I feel less 
incompetent to discuss this subject than most others in 
theology is that in my daily work I walk by faith and 
not by sight. My tools and materials are atoms and 
molecules, things no one has ever seen, and no one ever 
can see. Every act is carried on in obedience to natu- 
ral laws for which I know no reason; but if I should 
lose faith in them it would be at the risk of my life. In 
this, however, I am doing no more and no less than 
every one else. Every one who lives must put constant 
faith in the laws of nature. Unwavering, unquestion- 
ing faith, blind faith, for nobody knows much about the 
natural forces which he is nevertheless compelled to put 
faith in. 

The law of gravitation was discovered by Newton— 
that is, our knowledge of it began with him; but men 
knew it before by faith just as indeed they know it now. 
A man puts faith in the laws of gravitation long before 
he studies physics. You know that walking is simply 
continual falling. You stand on one foot and throw 
yourself forward, relying on the force of gravitation to 
bring your body into position to be caught by your 
other foot. Now if the force of gravitation should 
change, becoming less or greater or reversed in direc- 
tion, the result would be disastrous. So it is literally 
true that we walk by faith and not by sight. 

Every breath we draw, every mouthful we eat, is 
taken with perfect confidence in the chemical laws that 
govern the composition and reactions of air and food. 
The farmer who plants his seed puts faith in more laws 
of meteorology than the science of meteorology knows. 
He puts faith in the botanical law announced at the 


84 FAITH 


foundation of the world that every seed shall bring 
forth of its kind. He is sure if he plants alfalfa it will 
not come up turnips—but he does not know why. 
Neither does anybody else. 

There is a popular impression that scientific men do 
not need to use faith because they understand the rea- 
son for things. That is a great mistake. Nobody 
really “understands” anything. We know the “how” of 
a few things, the “why” of nothing. The law of gravi- 
tation is simply the statement of a fact; it is not an 
explanation. There is no theory of gravitation. The 
only reason that I or anybody can give why a book 
should not go up instead of down when J let go of it, is 
that it always has gone that way. 

A dog seeing the book go up and not down might 
be so surprised that he would run and hide; an ignorant 
man incurious in nature’s ways might wonder and talk 
about it for a week; a scholar might spend a lifetime if 
necessary in finding out more about it. The man who 
has studied science does not know so very much more 
than the man who has not, but he has a great deal more 
faith. The unscientific man is credulous because of 
lack of faith. He will invest money in a perpetual mo- 
tion machine, he will employ a rainmaker to send a lit- 
tle smoke up into the air, he will regulate his business 
by a horoscope, he will buy a bottle of red liquid to 
enable him to burn water in his motor or ashes in his 
furnace, he will take a drug that is guaranteed to cure 
all diseases, he does not question the possibility of get- 
ting something out of nothing. 

The scientist does not believe these things, but he 
cannot tell why they may not be. He simply has 


THE DYNAMICS OF FAITH 85 


greater faith in the constancy of natural law of which 
these would be contradictions. 

Are not the ways of God past finding out?  UIlti- 
mately, yes, but still we can find out a great deal about 
them. A chemical library gives a good deal of informa- 
tion as to how God handles atoms and molecules; a 
biological library, about how he constructs animals; a 
historical library, about what he is doing with men. By 
studying the past we can see what God has been doing 
and by faith in his constancy of purpose we may antici- 
pate what he is going to do. We may to some extent 
interpret God’s purposes. This is of the greatest im- 
portance, for it is right here that our part comes in. 
When we find out what God wishes done, then we can 
only show our faith in him by doing it. That is what 
religion is, carrying out God’s purposes. That is what 
we are here for, just as it is what the sun, moon, and 
stars are here for. 

As Blake puts it, 


If the Sun and Moon should doubt 
They’d immediately go out. 


To know God and to do his will—that is the whole 
duty of man. And the word “faith” covers. both, for 
faith without works is dead—that is, there isn’t any 
such thing as faith without works because we show our 
faith by our works. 

You must distinguish between faith and belief. A 
great deal of trouble has come from confusing the two. 
Faith involves action, it is a part of life, belief is a 
purely intellectual process of much less importance. It 


86 FAITH 


is not even necessary that they coincide. In science we 
put faith in many things that we don’t believe. We 
don’t believe that two parallel lines meet, we don’t be- 
lieve that a circle is made of a lot of straight lines, we 
don’t believe in the square root of minus one, we don’t 
believe that space is curved, we don’t believe that the 
ether is harder than steel and softer than air. But we 
have implicit faith in all these because by using them 
we are able to carry out our calculations to correct 
conclusions. It is only by the use of incredible assump- 
tions like these that the paths of the planets can be 
calculated, or dynamos built, or the strength of bridges 
determined. 

The scientist must act as if certain assumptions are 
true though often he can see no reason for them and 
sometimes indeed they seem unreasonable. 

One of the reasons why science is regarded by some 
people as a rival and enemy of religion is that they 
are misled by the idea that teachers of science spend 
their time trying to persuade their pupils to believe 
some thing or other. They do not realize that the 
question of credence rarely arises in scientific affairs. 
I taught chemistry for eighteen years, but it never oc- 
curred to me to ask one of my students if he thought 
the atomic theory was true. I should as soon have 
asked him if the atomic theory was blue. I did not 
care whether he believed the atomic theory or not. 
That made no difference to me or to my students. All 
I tried to do was to teach them to use the atomic 
theory and to realize that if they did not they might 
get blown up. 

Faith is the stimulus and guide to action. That is 


EVIDENCE OF THINGS NOT SEEN 87 


why faith and works are so closely, if not inseparably, 
connected. A mere intellectual belief may not have 
any influence on conduct. “The devils also believe, 
and tremble.” Trembling is not a form of action, al- 
though many folks seem to think so. 

The chemist believes that Faraday discovered ben- 
zene a hundred years ago. Doubtless that is true, but 
it does not matter much if the belief is false. We have 
benzene now, whoever discovered it. But suppose the 
chemist conceives the idea that he can make a new 
compound out of benzene by treating it with an un- 
tried chemical. He can hardly be said to believe in 
this nonexistent compound; at least he has no right to 
till the experiment is tried. He may frankly admit, if 
you ask him, that the chances are ninety-nine to one 
against his notion being true. It is merely an hypothe- 
sis, an unproved proposition, an unsupported assertion, 
an act of faith, which may or may not have the backing 
of reason.’ In fact it may be contrary to the textbooks, 
and so incongruous with the laws of nature, as held by 
his colleagues and himself, that he is ashamed to men- 
tion it to them. But he has faith enough in it to go 
into the laboratory and try it, perhaps to work on it 
for years. And his faith may be justified by its fruits. 
He may make the new compound and it may trans- 
form the world. That is the way science makes prog- 
ress, or one of the ways. Man throws his mind for- 
ward into the darkness, as a sailor his anchor; it 


1 Even Bacon, the apostle of rational and orderly research, ad- 
vises trying crazy and absurd experiments. See page 28 of my 
Chats on Science, also the chapter on “How Scientific Inspiration 
Comes,” which shows some curious analogies between scientific and 


religious experience. 


88 | FAITH 


catches onto something unknown and then he pulls 
himself up to it by the rope of reason. 

But some one may object that I have not said any- 
thing about faith in God. It is true that I have not 
mentioned faith in God, but that is what I have been 
talking about all the time. If faith in the laws of the 
material world and the laws, less known but no less real, 
that govern the actions of human beings is not faith in 
God, then I don’t know what it is. For the natural 
laws that we are so proud of and which some men wor- 
ship, are after all creatures of our own imaginations, 
more or less crude representations of what we see and 
hear. Our textbooks are but foggy photographs of 
the acts of God, taken by the pinhole camera of the 
mind of man. 

The belief that God wound up the world in the be- 
ginning and set it running and that it has been running 
by itself ever since, except for a little regulating now 
and then, is rank materialism. We believe in God the 
Sustainer as well as God the Creator. We believe in a 
God of the present—not merely a God who did some- 
thing once but a God who does everything now. For we 
can get no further back in our explanation of why the 
book falls down than the simple fact that God put the 
book and the earth together. That is the ultimate end 
of all our knowledge, the goal to which all roads lead. 
We can study how he puts them together, measure the 
force and the speed, but why we shall never know. So 
it is true that every one has faith in God to some extent 
though he may not know it any more than he knows 
that he walks by faith in gravitation; but there are de- 
grees of faith. Some trust God a little, some more, 


FAITH IN THE MARKET-PLACE 89 


none altogether. The Christian trusts God a little more 
than others because he knows more about him. Faith 
comes from acquaintance, from communion. 

The definition of faith given by St. Thomas Aquinas, 
greatest of medieval theologians, is a good one: “Faith 
is the courage of the spirit which projects itself for- 
ward, sure of finding the truth.” That is, faith is fu- 
turistic and activistic. ‘This distinguishes faith from 
belief, which concerns past events and is passive. 

Our social life too involves constant faith. We some- 
times hear a man say he has lost all faith in everybody, 
but if you watch him you will see that his acts belie 
his words. It is impossible to live among men without 
faith in them just as it is impossible to breathe without 
faith in the air. Such a man when he meets a stranger 
does not turn round to see if he is going to stab him in 
the back. Time was when men did do that, but no 
one has so little faith now. Modern commerce is the 
most remarkable example of the growth of faith with 
civilization. It is only a few centuries since the Flor- 
entine merchants conceived the idea of exchanging 
promises instead of cash; now that is the way most of 
the business is done. The greater the transaction the 
less likely that there will be any hard money used. In- 
deed, so rapidly does our faith increase that it is quite 
within the bounds of possibility that in time no money 
of intrinsic value, no gold or silver, will be actually ex- 
changed in ordinary transactions. A bank is a temple 
of faith. 

I have heard men tell of bribery and corruption in 
politics and end by saying that they had lost all faith 
in the government, but I never dared to risk offering 


90 FAITH 


them a greenback or a government bond to see if they 
were really in earnest. Any one who puts a stamp on 
a letter and drops it in the box puts faith in the govern- 
ment. So too we may think and talk evil of our neigh- 
bors, but we entrust them every day with our lives, our 
fortunes, and our sacred honor. Civilization is simply 
an education in faith. War and anarchy are alike due 
to faithlessness. 

Read the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, in which Paul 
gives examples of what faith has done for the advance- 
ment of his own race: 


Through faith we understand that the worlds were 
framed by the word of God, so that things that are seen 
were not made of things which do appear... . 

By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a 
place which he should after receive for an inheritance, 
obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. .. . 

By faith Moses ... forsook Egypt, not fearing the 
wrath of the king; for he endured, as seeing him who is 
invisible. ... 

By faith they passed through the Red Sea as by dry 
land: which the Egyptians assaying to do were drowned. 

By faith the walls of Jericho fell down, after they were 
compassed about seven days. ... 

And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me 
to tell of Gedeon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of 
Jephthe; of David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets: 

Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteous- 
ness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, 

Quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the 
sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant 
in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. 


THE EPISTLE TO THE AMERICANS 91 


Our own history is as full of the marvelous achieve- 
ments of men of faith as was that of the ancient He- 
brews, and we should see it as clearly if only our his- 
torians were as good as theirs. Let me continue the 
list, not in parody, but in the same spirit as Paul. 

By faith Columbus set out in an open boat to go 
around the unknown world. 

By faith the Pilgrim fathers left their homes and 
landed on the stern and rock-bound coast of New Eng- 
land. They sought liberty to worship God and became 
our spiritual forefathers. 

By faith Washington took up arms against an em- 
pire whose morning drum-beats encircled the world. 

By faith Jefferson bought the land wherein millions 
now live, although people laughed at him for acquiring 
useless and inaccessible territory. 

By faith our fathers crossed the prairies as of old 
their fathers crossed the sea, to make the West as the 
East, the homestead of the free. 

By faith a band of American missionaries went to 
the cannibal islands and gave us Hawaii. 

And what shall I say of those who by faith removed 
mountains and bridged rivers; who brought waters to 
a thirsty land and made the desert rejoice and blossom 
as the rose; who gave sight to the blind, cleansed the 
lepers, and caused the lame to walk; of those who went 
over the sea to share the peril of oppressed peoples, 
who suffered torment and death from fire and smoke; 
those who took food to the starving in strange lands; 
and those who went down into the sea in ships and up 
into the air like eagles? 

History is full of miracles wrought by faith; mira- 


92 | FAITH 


cles of invention by men who had faith in the God of 
nature, miracles of war by men who had faith in the 
Lord of Hosts, miracles of philanthropy by men who 
had faith in the All Merciful, miracles of reform by 
men who had faith in the God of righteousness. 

What is there that cannot be accomplished by faith? 
The Bible says nothing. If any man does not believe 
it, let him set the limits. Does he know how bad the dis- 
ease that faith cannot cure, does he know how corrupt 
the nation that faith will not regenerate, does he know 
how wicked the heart is that faith cannot redeem? The 
statements made in the Bible are very sweeping. “If 
ye shall ask anything in my name I will do it.” 

Now at first sight this puts the government of the 
universe in the hands of every individual, of fallible 
men with passions and prejudices, of men of different 
opinions whose prayers would be contradictory. But if 
we examine the words “in my name” we shall see it 
means more than the formal words “‘for Christ’s sake” 
with which we end our prayers. It means that the pe- 
tition is made by a follower of Christ, by one who is 
striving to bring his own will in harmony with the will 
of God. The petitioner believes that his request is one 
which would receive the indorsement of Christ, and if 
it would not, he would be the first to wish it void. When 
a man has faith to say that, his prayers will be an- 
swered. He shares in the omnipotence of God. God 
reigns and those who are with God are always on the 
winning side in the struggle of this life. “All things 
work together for good to them that love God.” 

To have a strong and well-founded faith in God we 
must know him. We must study his self-revelation in 


ON THE LORD’S SIDE 93 


nature, in history and best of all in the Bible, and when 
we have found out a little of his purposes, then we are 
to make our purposes the same, for it is in vain that a 
man fights against God. It is only the man who is on 
the Lord’s side that succeeds in anything. It is only of 
him who has faith that it may be said, ‘“‘Whatsoever he 
doeth shall prosper.” Faith is harmony with God, 
working with him, thinking with him, feeling with him. 


THE INTERNAL CONFLICT 


I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present 
with me.—Romans 7:14-25; 8:1-14. 


THE older we grow, the more complex does life ap- 
pear to us. When we are young the problems of life 
seem quite simple. We have few, but very definite, 
opinions; we attack our work with singleness of pur- 
pose. We make up our minds quickly because we 
haven’t much of any minds to make up. To any ques- 
tion there are but two sides, the right side and the 
wrong side, as easily distinguished as black from white. 
We are therefore intolerant. 

As we grow older, we find that all questions are really 
polygons, with many sides, and it is often hard to dis- 
tinguish the right one among them. We find that many 
sincere attempts to reform the world have only resulted 
in deforming it. We have to revise our hasty, intuitive 
judgments of people. We are surprised to find that 
criminals have their good traits, and we are shocked 
at finding serious defects in the characters of those we 
have admired and almost worshiped. When I show 
pictures to children the first question they ask is, “Is 
he a good man, or is he a bad man?” Now there are 
a few like Nero or Judas, Abraham or John, that I can 
give a definite answer for, but I find it difficult to per- 
suade the little chaps that humanity is not painted in 
black and white but with infinite gradations of spade 


and color. 
94 


DUAL PERSONALITY 95 


Even after a young man has learned by sad experi- 
ence that people are really very complex, and that he 
cannot always depend on them to do what he expects 
them to do, he has a still more startling discovery to 
make; that is, that he himself is more complex than 
he had supposed and that he cannot always depend on 
himself. That is what finally knocks the conceit out of 
a man and makes it possible for him to amount to any- 
thing. It is a salutary and necessary lesson though a 
bitter one. Whether he has been posing as a respecta- 
ble man or as a “tough” he finds that his acts are not 
consistent with his profession, that it is just as hard 
to live consistent to bad principles as to good ones. 
He finds out, what was incredible to him before, that 
he does things voluntarily that he does not want to do, 
that this paradox is a reality. Just as he finds that his 
physical constitution, which he thought invulnerable, 
gives way at critical moments, so his moral nature 
shows unexpected weaknesses that alarm him. He de- 
tects himself in unworthy acts that he supposed him- 
self incapable of; he does things at which his whole 
moral nature revolts. 

Now it is a critical period in a man’s life when he 
makes the discovery that there are two natures strug- 
gling within him. Many a young man when he finds 
out that he can never be wholly good, gives up the 
struggle and determines that he will be wholly bad, only 
to find that the limitations of human nature do not per- 
mit that either. He cannot rid himself entirely of 
either of the two natures struggling within him. What 
he can do is to decide which shall be master and which 
the intruder, which one of his two natures he will love 


96 THE INTERNAL CONFLICT 


or hate, serve or despise. “Religion is the devotion 
that half of every individual yields to his other half, 
the worship of his more vigorous and heroic by his 
more abject and inert aspects.” * 

Experimental psychology has given a more definite 
and literal meaning to the words of Paul. We now 
know that it is possible to separate in an individual two 
or more selves which may be quite distinct in character 
and ability. One may be dull, the other witty; one may 
be peaceable, the other quarrelsome; one kind, the 
other mischievous. These may alternately control the 
speech and actions of the individual, or they may si- 
multaneously manage different parts of the same brain. 
An instance of this is found in cases of periodical in- 
sanity in which a man leaves his family and friends, 
for months leading another life, knowing nothing of his 
former self until his return—as we say—to his senses, 
to himself. We see the same thing in the periodical 
drunkard who acts and feels like another person when 
on a spree. He has no shame for what he does under 
those conditions, as he does not feel responsible for the 
other man. Nothing so weakens the power of the 
higher nature over the lower as do alcohol and mor- 
phine. Formerly, when people saw these strange 
changes by which a sober-minded and respectable man 
became for a time a criminal and a lunatic, losing both 
his moral and his mental sanity, they said he was ‘“‘pos- 
sessed of a devil.” I, for one, do not object to that 
phraseology. I think it better than the vague and sen- 
timental phrases we have substituted for it. There is 
just as much convenience and propriety in personify- 

1 Ortega y Gasset. 


JEKYLL AND HYDE 97 


ing the forces of evil as the forces of good. But it 
is out of fashion now to speak of the devil in polite 
society—perhaps because it is not good manners to 
discuss a person who is present. 

Ordinarily, of course, our good and evil tendencies do 
not crystallize into distinct selves. They appear merely 
as impulses acting on our thoughts and sometimes influ- 
encing our acts, so that we “do that which we would 
not,” although we do not go so far as to develop a 
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde complex. 


Within my earthly temple there’s a crowd, 
There’s one of us that’s humble, one that’s proud; 
There’s one who’s broken-hearted for his sins, 
There’s one who unrepentant sits and grins; 
There’s one who loves his neighbor as himself, 
And one who cares for naught but fame and pelf. 
From much perplexing care I would be free 

If I could once determine which is Me. 


The last line covers the important point, to determine 
which of these several selves J will be. That is our 
duty, to decide with which of these warring factions 
we will ally ourselves, to choose this day whom we 
will serve, God or Mammon. It is out of our power to 
be pure angel or devil; we have merely to make up 
our minds on which side we will fight. That is the way 
Paul did. He saw the right, and boldly declared him- 
self on that side. Thus he could fight internal evil just 
as well as external evil in other people. ‘Now if I 
do that which I would not, it is no longer J that do it 
but sin that dwelleth in me. For J delight in the law 


98 ‘THE INTERNAL CONFLICT 


of God, but I see another law in my members warring 
against the law of my mind.” 

Notice another thing, Paul identifies his sinful nature 
with his body and his better nature with his mind. Is 
that fair? Are not mind and body equally good or 
bad? at least equally important? Some of Paul’s de- 
nunciations of the flesh sound harsh to us nowadays; we 
suspect him of asceticism. For just now we are in an 
age devoted to the glorification of the physical. What- 
ever is natural is right, they say, meaning by that what- 
ever is dictated by that nature we share with the beasts. 
It is an age like that of later Rome when the athlete was 
more admired than the scholar. It is the popular phi- 
losophy that health implies goodness, and that a sound 
body will insure a sound mind. The gymnasium is 
advocated as a substitute for both school and church, 
and men teach that all that is needed to reform the 
criminal in the slums is plenty of soap and water with 
a park near by where he can go and look at the pretty 
flowers whenever he is tempted to be naughty. 

This point of view ignores the fact that it is the 
criminal who makes the vicious slums, not the reverse. 
Man is not the product of his environment; he creates 
his environment. As Plato says, “The soul spins its 
own web and weaves its own body.” All efforts to 
secure pure food, pure water, and pure air are to be 
encouraged, but we must remember that it is as true 
today as it ever was that it is not what goeth into the 
mouth that defileth a man, but those things that pro- 
ceed out of the mouth, come forth from the heart, they 
defile a man. Evil is not something that comes to us 
from without, from unfavorable circumstances. It has 


ORIGINAL SIN 99 


its source in our own hearts. Evil exists nowhere but 
in the hearts of men. Circumstances may develop it, 
but the germ must be there to be stimulated. A tempta- 
tion is harmless to one who is not tempted. The for- 
tress of Mansoul is never carried by storm; if it falls it 
is always due to traitors who open the gates. A man’s 
foes shall be those of his own household—yes, even of 
his own body. This is expressed by Barnard’s group of 
statuary, and by Hugo’s lines, “I feel two natures 
struggling within me.” 

This evil is born in us; it is an inheritance from our 
ancestors. This doctrine of natural depravity, of con- 
genital evil, is one that is very obnoxious to modern 
taste, which shuts its eyes to everything unpleasant, 
and believes only what it chooses to believe. But 
that which people most dislike to hear is what they 
need to hear the most. If I choose to discuss un- 
pleasant topics it is because I am freer to do so than 
your pastor would be. 

The doctrine of natural depravity was held by the 
church through centuries of trial and persecution. To 
give it up now when the whole weight of science has 
come to its support would be foolishness. According 
to the sentimentalists we come into the world trailing 
clouds of glory from heaven which is our home. Thank 
God, heaven is our future home, not our past home; 
man’s destination, not his origin. Rather say: we come 
into the world prisoners to sin; dragging after us like 
a ball and chain the sins of our ancestors from nobody 
knows how far back. It is the body with its inherited, 
brutish instincts and passions that draws us backward 
and downward; it is our new endowment, the soul, that 


100 THE INTERNAL CONFLICT 


inspires us to rise. Plato likens a man to a charioteer 
driving two horses, one black and fractious ever pulling 
downward, the other white, and winged, striving heav- 
enward; and it takes a skillful driver to keep such a 
team pulling together. 

It would not be becoming in an amateur preacher to 
settle all the theological problems that have puzzled 
the ages, but I will suggest that the question of the 
origin of evil is not so dark as it once appeared. Evil 
is largely the survival of the unfit. Man is progressing 
gradually, and partially; there are no sudden changes. 
As the boy outgrows his clothes but has to wear them 
even when they get too tight, and inadequate, so we 
have the remnants of the ethical garments of antiquity 
about us yet. 

For good and evil are relative terms, like white and 
black, up and down. The virtues of the savage become 
the vices of the civilized man. Evil is an anachronism. 
Dirt is matter out of place, weeds are plants growing 
where they are not wanted, sins are moral weeds and 
dirt—mistimed and misplaced acts. The vermiform 
appendix and wisdom teeth are physiological sins. 
Formerly useful organs, they are now useless, and 
therefore dangerous. Satan finds some mischief still 
for all our idle organs to do. 

Most of our modern vices are virtues that have out- 
lived their usefulness. We inherit—and I use the word 
in a wider than the physiological sense—we inherit our 
domineering temper and haughtiness from the “knights 
of old.” It was a virtue with them; it purified the race 
and raised it to leadership. It is a vice with us; it is 
the source of class hatred, feuds, and caste. 


VESTIGIAL VICES 101 


We inherit the love of fighting from our Viking an- 
cestors. It was a virtue in those days; it regenerated 
dying nations. It is a vice now, making us quarrel- 
some and offensive, and standing in the way of peace. 
Anachronisms are dangerous. 

The ancient inhabitants of the shores of the North 
Sea were superstitious. They thought fire was a demon 
and the wind a spirit. It was a virtue in them. It 
led to a belief in an All-Father and a future heaven. 
But superstition, having done its work, is now a hin- 
drance to progress. It befogs the objects of daily life, 
leads us astray into many foolish ways and veils for 
us the face of God himself. 

It is of course not evil alone that we inherit. From 
those medieval knights we get our chivalry and our 
sense of honor; from the Vikings our courage and love 
of adventure; from the primeval man our endurance and 
ability to do hard work. The good we inherit remains 
and develops, the evil gradually dies out. Evil is tran- 
sitory; good is permanent and immortal. 

The battle between good and evil is a part of the 
universal struggle between progress and conservatism, 
between force and inertia. Not that conservatism is 
always wrong; on the contrary it is generally right. 
Not all changes are progress, only one, one out of the 
many possible. Each new standard of morality shames 
the old. But mankind does not march in rank like 
soldiers, keeping step together. There are pioneers and 
stragglers. Not all those who are living on earth at 
the same time are moral contemporaries. ‘There are 
veople we see every day still living in the Dark Ages, 
with medieval virtues, ideals, and aspirations. Some 


102 THE INTERNAL CONFLICT 


people are pagan, and some prehistoric, with a natural 
code of morality that would disgrace a troglodyte or a 
mound builder. Some of our acquaintances are prob- 
ably living already in the twenty-first century—if we 
only knew which they were. 

Not only this, but each individual has different stand- 
ards, belonging to various dates, incongruous, incom- 
patible, his members warring against one another, and 
sometimes he leaves the twentieth century and slips 
back to some ruder age or even to the level of the 
brutes. There is always a kind of moral gravitation act- 
ing to pull us downward and backward. “Onward and 
upward” must be our motto. There can be no standing 
still. In the words of Christina Rossetti: 


“Does the road wind uphill all the way?” 
“Yes, to the very end.” 

“Will the day’s journey take the whole, long day?” 
“From morn to night, my friend.” 


We must “move upward, working out the beast, and let 
the ape and tiger die.” We must climb on stepping 
stones of our dead selves to higher things. 

If then we find ourselves born in bondage, endowed 
with the sins of our ancestors, what can we do? Can 
a man fight successfully against heredity? Well, yes, 
to some extent. But there is a better way. Change the 
heredity. Adopt a new father and inherit goodness in- 
stead of evil. That is the plan recommended in the 
chapter that I am merely paraphrasing in modern lan- 
guage. * 

“For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they 


2 Romans 8:10, 14-17. 


ADOPTING GOD AS OUR FATHER 103 


are the sons of God. And if children, then heirs, heirs 
of God, and joint heirs with Christ.” 

We cannot greatly alter the body we were born with, 
but we can change our character. We cannot alter our 
features but we can change our expression. 

We can have help in our climb, in our fight. We 
can get inspiration and strength. In the fight of spirit 
with flesh we can have the support of the spirit of God. 
The more we use this assistance the more assistance we 
get. Unto him that hath shall be given. Strength, 
either physical or moral, that we do not use is taken 
from us. We have all, probably, consciously received 
some aid from this source. We do not get more because 
we do not use what we have. We do not realize what a 
dangerous fight we are in until the moment when the 
powers of darkness catch us unaware and overthrow 
us. 

Now “conversion” is merely this change of allegiance, 
of heirship. It is not change of mind, but change of 
self. It is not acquiring a new cargo, but shifting the 
center of gravity. Sometimes it is coincident with a 
change of opinion, but usually not. You simply ally 
yourself with the better elements of your nature and 
make them dominant. The change may be as sudden 
as the change from insanity to sanity. Following this 
change, before it can be anything more than a good 
intention, must come a life of struggle and develop- 
ment. You have put yourself on the right side, you 
have yet to make it the winning side. 

A little girl once went to Sunday school and they 
taught her Paul’s words, “I keep under my body.” 
When she returned her mother asked her for the 


104 THE INTERNAL CONFLICT 


“Golden Text’ and she said, “I keep my soul on top.” 
I have sometimes thought the little girl improved the 
text. For the best way to eradicate evil is to crowd it 
out. The best way to destroy sin is to cultivate virtues. 
The wise gardener works to get his crop so flourishing 
that it will overshadow the ground and so keep down 
the weeds. I do not say that in our moral gardens a 
little pruning and weed-pulling are not necessary, but 
the main effort should be toward culture rather than 
protection. If a man should devote his whole time to 
getting rid of his vices, and nothing more, he would 
finally succeed in producing only barren soil, devoid of 
goodness as well as evil—good for nothing. But he 
could not even succeed in getting rid of his vices in 
that way, for nature abhors a vacuum. We must sub- 
stitute. Interdiction has its place, but substitution is 
better. When a new ideal is introduced the old ideal 
withers away. The child gets enjoyment from active 
play. He wonders who makes the grown people sit still 
and talk. As he grows older it is the conversation that 
attracts him and he has a distaste for his top and ball. 
People who enjoy coarse pleasures cannot understand | 
why there are others who do not take part in them. 
They do not realize that to persons of refined taste they 
are not pleasurable, but painful or disgusting. The 
only effective way to stop the reading of pernicious 
literature is to stimulate a love for good literature. A 
healthy mind gradually outgrows such tastes anyway, 
and looks with amusement on the trashy books he was 
once so fond of, especially when he notes that the silliest 
passages are those he marked and underscored. 

The ascetic idea of repression does not develop the 


AFFIRMATIVE RELIGION 105 


highest type of character. Notice the change in phrase- 
ology from the Old Testament to the New Testament. 
“Thou shalt have no other Gods before me,” ‘Thou 
shalt not” is the way Moses expressed it. Christ’s 
words are, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God.... 
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” The gospel 
method is active; the cultivation of virtue, not restric- 
tion of vice. Do, instead of do not. The Gospel set 
people to doing right instead of escaping wrong. The 
lower nature loses its power as we cultivate the higher, 
and finally we may say with Tennyson: 


“T have climbed to the snows of age and I gaze at a field 
in the Past, 

Where I sank with the body at times in the sloughs of a 
low desire. 

But I hear no yelp of the beast and the Man is quiet at 
last 

As he stands on the heights of his life with a glimpse of 
a height that is higher.” 


THE GREAT BACKSLIDING 


Can ye not discern the signs of the times?—Matthew 16:3. 


THE new map of Europe, with its patchwork of iso- 
lated nationalities, will look more like the Europe of the 
Middle Ages than like the Europe of the nineteenth 
century with its vast imperial aggregates and its com- 
mercial and cultural internationalism. ‘The medieval- 
ism of the modern map reflects the medievalism of the 
modern mind. In art, literature, religion, and social 
forms we cannot fail to observe a decided reaction to- 
ward more primitive modes of thought. It is said that 
“revolutions never go backward.” It would be quite 
as correct to say that wars always do. 

However praiseworthy the main aim of the conflict, 
and however complete its triumph, yet war is followed 
by a lassitude and lapse in which other gains of civiliza- 
tion may be temporarily lost. 

The material losses of the Great War are not so seri- 
ous as the moral and mental losses. ‘The victorious 
nations seem to suffer as much as the defeated nations 
from such maladies of the mind. Our own country, 
though less and later involved in the war, has not 
escaped the contagion. 

It would be wrong to ascribe the psychological 
changes manifest since the war to the war alone. Per- 
haps rather we should say that the war was one of the 
symptoms of the prevailing psychology of our times. 

106 


HOMO EX MACHINA 107 


What makes our age different from all the preceding 
and invalidates the deductions from history is the pos- 
session of inanimate power. Man is drawing upon the 
accumulated capital of the millions of years prior to his 
advent. In his use of coal and oil he is lighting his 
houses and running his machines with the sunshine of 
the Carboniferous Era. Science has given each of us, 
every man, woman, and child in America, if the appor- 
tionment were equal, a train of twenty slaves to wait 
upon him night and day. 

What this acquisition of inanimate energy might 
mean for the advancement of civilization we can hardly 
conceive, for of late it has been largely used for the 
destruction of civilization. 

We have now come to realize that what is done by an 
engine depends as much on the character of the engi- 
neer as on the power of the machine. Our horsepower 
per capita has risen to an unprecedented height. But 
has our mindpower per capita increased with it in prv- 
portion? If not, this new-found force may prove dan- 
gerous to us. The question on which the future de- 
pends is whether men can muster up among them 
enough mentality and morality to manage the stupen- 
dous powers which applied science has recently placed 
in their hands. Once upon a time, long before the 
oldest of us was born, before any man was born for 
that matter—I refer to the Jurassic Era—the ruling 
race was composed of creatures much larger and more 
powerful than we are. There were giants on the earth 
in those days, gigantic saurians which when they stood 
up on their hind legs would tower up four times as tall 
as aman. But their cranial cavity was smaller than 


108 THE GREAT BACKSLIDING 


ours. The Jurassic saurians had grown too big for 
their brains; so they perished. 

Now the addition of machine power to the natural 
strength of man is equivalent to adding more powerful 
arms and legs, more skillful hands, and sharper senses. 
It increases his physical capacity but does not directly 
enlarge his mental ability. It endows him with a giant’s 
strength but does not teach him how to use it. 

Among the horrid fancies that haunted the head of 
Samuel Butler of Erewhon was a nightmare of a coming 
age when the machines that man has made for his serv- 
ice should rise in Spartacan revolt and enslave man. 
This skit of Butler’s on ‘The Mechanical Creation” is 
prought to mind by recent events. 

The last few years have made it manifest that in our 
civilization the mechanical forces have got ahead of 
the moral forces. Man is mounted on a bigger horse 
than he can ride. Making war was an efficient process; 
making peace is—not. The chemist did his bit with 
amazing, even alarming, proficiency. The diplomat fell 
down on his job. The physical sciences have evidently 
been developed so far beyond the political sciences as to 
constitute a menace to civilization. The modern man, 
like the Arabian fisherman, has liberated from the 
bottle genii that he does not know how to control. 

The late War revealed to the horror of the world the 
possibilities for destruction that science has placed in 
the hands of mortal man. Unless he has undergone a 
moral reformation, of which there is no apparent sign, 
he is not likely to be deterred from using them by a 
paper prohibition. The Prince of the Power of the Air 
will be the ruling spirit in the next war—if there is a 


THE NEXT WAR 109 


next war. It is now possible to send an airplane, with 
or without a pilot, by day or night, over the enemy’s 
country to sprinkle the ground with a liquid so deadly 
that a whiff inhaled or a few drops touching the skin 
will cause death. There is no need for fine sighting and 
mathematical calculations such as the artilleryman re- 
quires; no need to know where the enemy is. The air- 
ships or self-propelled projectiles will simply move over 
the land, as a farmer’s potato-bug sprinkler goes over 
a field, and a certain strip of territory, say half a mile 
wide and a hundred miles long, will be instantaneously 
depopulated and will remain uninhabitable for days to 
come. In the next war, if there is one, there will be no 
frontiers, no intrenched line, no exempt cities, no dis- 
tinction between combatant and noncombatant. Forti- 
fications will be futile, for the wall that will withstand 
a forty-two-centimeter projectile is easily penetrable to 
a molecule of poison gas. The next war, if there is one, 
may be decided without the action of cavalry, infantry, 
or artillery. On sea the revolution will be quite as com- 
plete. There will be no need to sink ships in the next 
war, for the reason that it is not worth while shooting 
a riderless cavalry horse. 


1 Being merely a layman in military matters, I make the claims 
for chemical warfare conservative. Experts may go further; 
for instance, Major-General George O. Squiers of the United States 
Army, in speaking at the Franklin Institute Centenary, said: “Just 
as we now give a harmless anesthetic to an individual for a surgi- 
cal operation, so we may be able in the future to put a whole 
nation asleep for forty-eight hours, by a combination of new chemi- 
cal discoveries with radio-controlled manless airplanes.’ For fur- 
ther discussion of the question of the revolution in warfare see the 
little book entitled “Callinicus,’ by Dr. J. B. S. Haldane of Cam: 
bridge, who was in the British army. 


110 THE GREAT BACKSLIDING 


Can we say that man has reached a moral and mental 
maturity so that he can be safely entrusted with such 
dangerous weapons? We cannot take them from him 
as we can take a revolver from a child. A paper pro- 
hibition will not restrain an unscrupulous or desperate 
enemy from using any effective weapon. But it is clear 
that unless man can learn how to make proper use of 
his new-found knowledge he is likely to destroy him- 
self. Science has endowed man with the power of a 
superman, but his mind remains human, all too human. 
He is like a pauper come into a fortune, a laborer who 
has been put into the position of boss of the shop, a 
private promoted to command the regiment, a slave 
made the master of slaves. Man has had no training 
for such responsibilities as have now been thrust upon 
him. This new command of time and space, this 
mastery of unknown forces, this apparition of new 
perils, this entrance into untried fields, all these are too 
much for man of today. He secretly shrinks and 
openly blusters. He alternately cowers and brags. 
He lacks confidence in himself and therefore he sus- 
pects others. He is afraid of the dark. He is afraid of 
his shadow, for that is dark. He shudders with ancient 
fears. The modern man is suffering from shell-shock. 
He has all the various symptoms. ‘Those who stayed 
at home are often worse than those that went over 
there. The victorious nations show the same symp- 
toms as the defeated. 

The causeless suspicions, the sudden hatreds, the 
erratic actions, the intolerance of opposing opinion, the 
unwillingness to face facts, the return of primitive 
modes of thought, the alternations of despair and dis- 


BACK TO BARBARISM 111 


sipation, the substitution of emotionalism for ration- 
ality, the revival of superstition—such are the stigmata 
of hysteria and such are the characteristics of our time. 

In mental diseases where the conscious will relaxes 
and the more recent centers of thought decay, the 
patient relapses into a sort of second childhood, using 
baby-talk, drawing the crude pictures that he made 
when first he took pencil in hand and reverting consci- 
ously to the unconscious vices of infancy. 

An uprush of infantilism from the unconscious mind 
of the human race is dragging the modern world back 
to the superstitions, obscurantism, formalism, gargoyl- 
ism, and parochialism of the Dark Ages. 

Our most advanced artists take as their teachers the 
most backward savages surviving on the earth. For- 
merly ambitious young painters went to Greece or 
Rome to study. Now they journey to Tahiti or the 
Congo. Ifa modernist art gallery should be preserved 
for several thousand years the archeologist of that day 
studying the style would unhesitatingly assign it to 
a period prior to, and more primitive than, the Upper 
Paleolithic when the Cro-Magnon man depicted the 
mammoth and the reindeer on the walls of the caves 
of Altamira, 25,000 years ago. 

Modern literature, especially poetry, shows marked 
reversion to infantile types, in the breaking up of the 
logical sentence into disconnected fragments, in the 
appearance of nouns without verbs and adjectives with- 
out nouns, in the shortened paragraphs, in the ejacu- 
latory style, in the overruling of sense by sound, in the 
repetitions resembling echolalia and verbigeration. 

In music the same reversion to the childhood of the 


112 THE GREAT BACKSLIDING 


race is apparent. The tom-tom sets the pace for 
modern progress and the primitive piper calls the tune 
to which we dance. 

In religion we see a strong reactionary movement, af- 
fecting in some degree all the various churches. There 
is stricter insistence on creedal requirements, denomina- 
tional lines are more rigidly drawn, and heresy trials 
are becoming common. Medieval forms and cere- 
monies are coming into the very churches that were 
originally established as a protest against them. Sects 
practicing primitive modes of worship, such as the 
Holy Rollers, are gaining rapidly in numbers. Intol- 
erance in all forms, racial, sectarian, linguistic, patri« 
otic, becomes daily more dominant and bitter. In the 
recent national election sectarian issues were more con- 
spicuous than ever before. 

The movement toward medievalism in art, religion, 
industrial organization, and social forms is gaining 
ground under the leadership of such brilliant writers 
as Gilbert K. Chesterton. It seems as if man, with his 
eyes half opened, resents the light. ‘‘Pull down the 
curtain,” he shouts to the scientist, “or Pll pitch you 
out of the window.” Then he rolls over and pulls the 
cover over his head to get another nice long sleep such 
as he had from A.D. 300 to A.D. 1200. 

The world, like a child at Christmas, is willing to 
receive the material gifts of science but refuses its 
moral lessons. The world will accept from the hands 
of science railroads and radios, soft raiment and for- 
eign foods, airplanes and submarines, but turns a deaf 
ear when science would talk of peace, efficiency, 
economy, foresight, and the frank facing of facts. 


LOST LIBERTIES 113 


It was commonly supposed that the fights for evolu- 
tion and the higher criticism of the Bible which had 
absorbed so large a part of the intellectual activity of 
the nineteenth century had been virtually won by the 
beginning of the twentieth, but we see now a strong 
movement against both. The Fundamentalists are en- 
deavoring to eliminate the teaching of evolution in the 
schools and colleges. It is even proposed to go further 
and to prohibit by law the teaching of anything that 
offends the religious sentiment or undermines the faith 
of any one. Under this law it would be impossible to 
teach that the earth is round or that the Indians are 
not descendants of the lost Jewish tribes or that there 
is any such thing as disease in a school containing a 
Dowieite, Mormon, or Christian Science child. Teach- 
ing under such circumstances would be one of the 
extra-hazardous professions. 

We became accustomed to the censorship and the 
mass suppression of unpopular opinions during the 
war, and the disposition to use such legal and illegal 
means for the repression of undesirable views has been 
growing ever since. The most remarkable feature of 
the situation is that there is almost universal acquies- 
cence in the restriction of the rights of free speech and 
propaganda for which our ancestors fought and suf- 
fered martyrdom. 

One of the curious though natural results of the War 
is the millennialist movement which is now sweeping 
over the country and has appeared in Europe. It is 
not due to the influence of one powerful personality, 
but has sprung up spontaneously in various churches 
and localities, an instinctive outbreak of the folk-psy- 


114 THE GREAT BACKSLIDING 


chology, of a state of mind such as prevailed in the year 
1000, when it was commonly believed that the end of 
the world was at hand. 

Along with the suspicion of science and scholarship 
comes a distrust and dislike of modern civilization, 
which is built on a scientific foundation. People are 
looking with longing eyes back to a primitive paradisial 
period, or forward to a rural Utopia, to an Edenic or 
Arcadian life. Some would have us take to the woods; 
some to the South Seas. ‘Back to Nature” is the 
theme of poets, romancers, and even preachers. In 
India Mahatma Gandhi heads a powerful movement 
for the elimination of machine power and its products. 
In Germany the multiform Wandervogel movement 
shows a tendency to revert to prehistoric sun-worship 
and to discard the customs and costumes of civilized 
life. 

This revival of the worship of the heathen earth- 
goddess, Magna Mater, began in an inoffensive fashion 
in the literature of the latter part of the eighteenth cen- 
tury and has since infected all classes and countries. 
It is now securely enthroned in the two strongholds 
that were erected against it, church and school. The 
neo-pagan poet Swinburne, who wrote 


Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; 
The world has grown gray from thy breath 


was premature in his despair. He might better have 
written 


Thou hast conquered, O rosy Rousseau; 
The world has grown gay from thy breath. 


HEATHEN OF THE HEATH 115 


Those who say “God made the country but the devil 
made the city” are reading history backward. The 
word “pagan” means literally “countryman” (paga- 
nus). “Civilization” is by self-definition a product of 
the city dweller (civis). Our modern nature-lovers 
are trying to rob the Creator of credit for the highest 
products of creative activity. They would make a 
scapegoat of God and drive him out of the town into 
the desert. But God is not in the thunder or the whirl- 
wind, but in the voice, the artificial creation of man. 
It is only by overcoming nature that man can rise. 

The cult of naturalism is now dominant everywhere. 
The call of the wild is drowning out the appeal of 
civilization. “Back to barbarism!” is the slogan of 
the hour. Sink into savagery. Praise the country and 
denounce the city. Admire cliffs but make fun of sky- 
scrapers. Extol forests and despise laboratories. 
Exalt the physical and ignore the intellectual. Spend 
half a million dollars on a new stadium and let the old 
library go to ruin. Abolish compulsory Latin and 
establish compulsory swimming. Patronize football 
and neglect debating. Up with the soldier and down 
with the savant. Promote pugilism and suppress paci- 
fism. Jazz your music and cube your painting. Rough- 
cast your walls, corrode your bricks, deckle your book- 
edges, wormhole your furniture, weather-stain your 
woodwork, coarsen your fabrics, and deform your pot- 
tery. Condemn everything new and worship every- 
thing old. Regenerate obsolescent languages, restore 
antiquated spelling, adopt medieval costumes, revive 
ancient rituals, inflame traditional animosities, resur- 
rect forgotten realms, reérect overthrown barriers. Cul- 


116 THE GREAT BACKSLIDING 


tivate the primitive virtues of personal bravery and 
clan loyalty. Reprove and repress the Christian vir- 
tues of kindliness and universal sympathy. 

Some of the signs of the times I have enumerated 
are good things in themselves, some are trifles of no 
consequence, but they all hang together and a floating 
straw shows the current of a river as well as a log. 
A change in taste is often the precursor of a shift of 
the trend of human affairs. The dominant tendency 
of the times is undoubtedly downward and backward, 
and the advance of science and the uplift of religion 
have not yet availed to check it. 

It is a reactionary spirit, antagonistic to progress 
and destructive to civilization. Science and Christian- 
ity are at one in abhorring the natural man and calling 
upon the civilized man to fight and subdue him. The 
conquest of nature, not the imitation of nature, is the 
whole duty of man.’ 

Metchnikoff and St. Paul unite in criticizing the 
body we were born with. St. Augustine and Huxley 
are in agreement as to the eternal conflict between 
man and nature. In his Romanes lecture on “Evolu- 
tion and Ethics” Huxley said, ““The ethical progress of 
society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, 
still less on running away from it, but on combating 
it,’ and again, ‘The history of civilization details the 
steps by which man has succeeded in building up an 
artificial world within the cosmos.” 

Our sins are mostly survivals. Like the vermiform 
appendix they are vestigial organs, needing excision. 


2This question is discussed in the first chapter of my Creative 
Chemistry; in fact it forms the theme of the entire book. 


THE WORSHIP OF THE BEAST 117 


It is those who believe in perpetuating the pugnacious 
propensities of the lower animals and man in his lower 
stages who are responsible for these years of war and 
the consequent anarchy. Modern literature is tainted 
throughout by that most pestilential heresy, zodlatry. 
From the child’s primer to the sociological treatise, 
animals and insects are held up for our admiration and 
imitation. 

This pan-pagan spirit has so corrupted our religious 
faith in recent years that a biologist is nowadays liable 
to be accused of blasphemy if he ventures to point out 
the imperfections in the human body or the waste and 
useless suffering that prevail throughout the animal 
and vegetable kingdoms. 

A few centuries ago he would have been accused of 
blasphemy if he had said a good word for nature. I 
could quote—if anybody would read them—a con- 
tinuous series of citations from the church fathers of 
every one of the first eighteen centuries of the Christian 
era proving that nature was altogether corrupt, vile, 
degrading, and accursed; something to be avoided, 
fought, subjugated, and eradicated as the only hope of 
man’s salvation. The Bible indeed tells us that the 
Creator when he first looked over his work pronounced 
it “good,” but we know that he later discarded many of 
those early models, such as the megalosaurus and the 
pterodactyl, in favor of more modern designs; and man 
has continued the work of his Maker by improving on 
the cattle and fruit trees that he inherited. He has 
even made some changes for the better in his own ap- 
pearance if we may judge from the pithecanthropus, 


118 THE GREAT BACKSLIDING 


but nothing to boast of compared with what he might 
do for himself by a strict course in eugenics. 

The real heretic is the man who believes in the infal- 
libility of nature and holds that it is the duty of man 
to conform to prehuman and subhuman conditions and 
conduct, instead of establishing new and higher aims 
and activities. John Stuart Mill was for once in his 
life orthodox in the strictest sense when he wrote:* 


The doctrine that men ought to follow nature... is 
equally irrational and immoral. Irrational, because all hu- 
man action whatever consists in altering and all useful 
action in improving the spontaneous course of nature: 
immoral because . . . any one who endeavored in his ac- 
tions to imitate the natural course of things would be uni- 
versally seen and acknowledged to be the wickedest of men. 


We should not allow our enjoyment of the beauties 
of nature, or our appreciation of the marvelous adap- 
tation of natural processes, or our dependence upon 
nature for existence, to blind us to the defects of 
nature, or to seduce us from our duty to thwart and 
subdue nature in so far as she interferes with our as- 
pirations toward a higher life and a better social order. 
“Nature is the work of the devil,’ says Blake in his 
blunt way, and while this may savor of the Manichzan 
or Gnostic heresies, it is not far from the view of 
Jesus * and of Paul ° that Satan is prince of this world, 
and his régime must be overthrown before the kingdom 
of God can be established on earth. 

3 Three Essays on Religion. 

¢ John 12: 313 14:30. 

5 Ephesians 2:2; 6:12, 


NATURE OUR STEPMOTHER 119 


But whether we use the language of ancient theology 
er of modern science we must admit the obvious fact 
that the best interests of mankind are often in opposi- 
tion with those of other creatures, and that the advent 
of man, with his vision of the future and his ethical 
ideals, brought a new factor into the world which con- 
travenes the previously existing system. ‘Mother 
Nature” is a fine phrase but misleading. We cannot 
forget that she has other children besides us. Na- 
ture must love the microbes, for she makes so many of 
them. Her smallest offspring are her eldest and her 
favorites, and to feed them she does not hesitate to 
sacrifice her latest and noblest, man. As for the ethics 
of nature, Matthew Arnold put it well in his ‘Sonnet 
to an Independent Preacher’’: 


Know, man hath all which Nature hath, but more, 
And in that more lie all his hopes of good. 

Nature is cruel, man is sick of blood; 

Nature is stubborn, man would fain adore: 

Nature is fickle, man hath need of rest; 

Nature forgives no debt, and fears no grave; 

Man would be mild, and with safe conscience blest. 
Man must begin, know this, where Nature ends: 
Nature and man can never be fast friends. 

Fool, if thou canst not pass her, rest her slave! 


Of all the various definitions of civilization I like 
best that of Hellwald:° 

“Civilization means the mastering of nature and the 
taming of man.”’ The mastering of nature is the task 
of science. The taming of man is the task of religion. 


6 History of Civilization, 1874. 


120 THE GREAT BACKSLIDING 


Man has no friends in the world except other men, 
and sometimes they are his enemies. As the latest 
comer on this planet man finds all the older inhabitants 
leagued against him and has to fight for a footing, 
sometimes for life. Léon Daudet in a curious and sug- 
gestive article on ‘‘Moloch and Minerva” ’ defines 
human life as “the totality of the energies that resist 
nature.” War, in his point of view, is a periodic re- 
venge of nature against man, a kind of moral cata- 
clysm, which breaks out whenever man, through the 
employment of the forces of nature, threatens to be- 
come master of the universe. 

Of course man is in a sense a part of nature if we 
define nature as meaning everything in the universe. 
But that use of the term is so limitless as to be mean- 
ingless. So I am using the word in its ordinary sense 
to distinguish man and his works from the rest of 
creation. For unless we make this distinction we can- 
not understand art, science, or religion. Man, by his 
unique ability to remember and record the past, to fore- 
see the future and to remodel the world, has set him- 
self apart from and above other creatures, and the gulf 
grows as civilization advances. Art is a mode of 
escape from reality into a new world created by the 
imagination of the painter, writer, or musician to suit 
himself. Science affords the means of transforming 
the material world into one more convenient for the 
needs of mankind. Religion reveals to us a vision of 
a better world and fits man for it by showing him how 
he can transform his own nature. All three of these 


7 “Moloch et Minerve: La guerre, la nature et Phomme,”’ Revue 
universelle, Jan. 15, 1924. 


THE GOD OF THINGS AS THEY ARE 121 


agencies of civilization are efforts to rise above nature, 
and all three have therefore super-natural aims. 

He who merely paints things as they are is no true 
artist, but a realist. He who is satisfied with things 
as they are is no true scientist, but a naturalist. He 
who worships the ‘God of Things as They Are” is no 
true Christian, but a heathen. The real pessimist 
is he who thinks everything is as good as it can be. 

Christianity is an exotic plant, a new species of re- 
ligion, not natural to the soil and climate of this world 
and so requiring constant care and cultivation, lest it 
should be overrun and crowded out by native weeds. 
The body of man, which he has inherited from the 
quadruped, is not adapted to the upright attitude that 
man has assumed, and this is the cause of many of our 
diseases. The moral nature of man, which he has 
inherited from the savage, is not adapted to the ethics 
of Christianity, and this is the cause of many of our 
sins. Uprightness of the body and righteousness of 
the soul are acquired attitudes and therefore difficult to 
maintain. 

We could not expect that the present tendency to- 
ward a blind admiration of nature, that is of the sub- 
human and sub-civilized, would be without effect upon 
the current standards of morality, and such indeed is 
one of the most conspicuous changes manifest in our 

times. 
One of the changes that we must frankly face is 
the rebellion against the code of morals on which our 
civilization is based. Formerly those who broke with 
the Church were careful to declare that they acted in 
the interests of a purer religion and a higher morality. 


bey THE GREAT BACKSLIDING 


Those who denied the divinity of Christ were loud 
in their profession of admiration for the teachings of 
Jesus. Now, however, we must recognize that a large 
and increasing class of people in every country not 
only violate the standards of Christian ethics, but ex- 
plicitly repudiate them. Violence is advanced as a 
necessity of the class struggle and even as a desirable 
thing in itself. Murder is taught as a fine art; the 
opium dream of De Quincey has become a reality. 
The destruction of property, the smashing of machines, 
the damaging of products, the ruination of business, 
are urged as a sacred duty. Handbooks on the theory 
and practice of sabotage are published. Work is neg- 
lected, not merely from natural laziness, but from con- 
scientious causes. The violation of contract, the break- 
ing of promises, is regarded as the highest ethics. 
Hatred is diligently cultivated. Licentiousness is 
openly advocated. Altruism is denied as undesirable 
or impossible. Sympathy is denounced as a symptom 
of weakness and degeneracy. Charity is considered 
as a double injury: it curses him that gives and him 
that takes. Thrift and industry are classed as vices 
instead of virtues. Cursing is commended; drunken- 
ness is defended. Family quarrels are encouraged, 
and wife-beating is advocated by popular writers of 
the day.® 


8For example—I mean, for instance—D. H. Lawrence in his 
Fantasia of the Unconscious, advising husbands how to treat their 
wives, says: “If you hate anything she does turn on her in a fury. 
Harry her and make her life a hell, so long as the real hot rage 
is in you... . Fight your wife out of her own self-conscious pre- 
occupation with herself. Batter her out of it till she is stunned.” 
And Nietzsche and Wedekind would say “Amen.” 


ANARCHY IN ETHICS 123 


Such sentiments in one form or another crop up in 
current literature so frequently and in such varied 
forms that it is vain to try to suppress them by any 
sort of censorship. If it were possible to crush out the 
Bolsheviki in Russia, the syndicalists of France, the 
anarchists of Italy, the Nietzscheans of Germany and 
the I.W.W. of America, there would still persist this 
spirit of denial of the established principles of ethics. 
It is not merely antichristian; it is clearly antimoral, 
for it is a challenge to all that has been regarded as 
the code of morality throughout the recorded history of 
the human race. The ccde of Hammurabi of Babylon, 
the maxims of Ptah-Hotep of Egypt and the laws of 
Moses of Sinai show that essentially the same funda- 
mental principles of right and justice were held then as 
now. In the seven thousand years since, few persons 
have questioned them, though many have disregarded 
them. The new thing is that now we hear them openly 
and emphatically denied and denounced. We can only 
hope that the advocates of the new immorality may be 
as unsuccessful as the preachers of the old morality in 
persuading the people to follow their injunctions. 

Perhaps too we can get comfort from Carlyle’s 
faith in the future: “Religion in unnoticed nooks Is 
weaving for herself new Vestures, wherewith to reap- 
pear, and bless us, or our sons or grandsons.” 


THE REVIVAL OF WITCHCRAFT 


Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live—Exodus 22:18. 

There must be none among you who burns his son or his daugh- 
ter alive, or who practises divination or soothsaying, no augur, no 
sorcerer, no one who weaves spells, no medium or magician, no 
necromancer. Any one given to these practices 1s abominable to 
the Eternal; indeed, it is on account of such practices that the 
Eternal dispossesses these nations before you.—Deuteronomy 18:11- 
12 (Moffatt trans.). 


RELIGION has been followed all through the ages by 
the dark shadow of superstition. Sometimes lengthen- 
ing, sometimes lessening; sometimes almost obliterated 
by the bright light of reason, sometimes obscuring the 
face of religion as by a storm cloud, it still persists and 
continues to cast upon our path the distorted and decep- 
tive image of the faith we follow. 

If certain of our most popular newspapers should by 
some unfortunate mischance be preserved to posterity 
the archeologist of two thousand years hence would 
form about the same sort of idea of our civilization as 
we have formed of the civilization of ancient Assyria 
from the cuneiform tablets. He would conclude from 
reading these papers that astrology was more in vogue 
than astronomy, that our medicine was mostly magic, 
that the credulity of the common people was boundless, 
that the practice of necromancy, divination, and other 
forms of witchcraft provided popular and profitable 
professions. 


The reversion to more primitive modes of thought 
124 


MODERN CREDULITY 125 


that is characteristic of the post-war period shows it- 
self in the double trend toward naturalism and toward 
supernaturalism. These tendencies are not opposed, 
as they may appear, but lead in the same direction, and 
both lead away from a rational religion and a sensible 
science. Naturalism leads to the admiration and imita- 
tion of the subhuman and subcivilized, and supernatur- 
alism in its present form is also turned backward toward 
the worst aspects of paganism, instead of forward to 
a higher type of humanity and superior social order, as 
true supernaturalism should be turned. 

The modern believer is disposed to repudiate the 
saints and prophets and to pin his faith on Sir Oliver 
Lodge and Eusapia Palladino. Amulets and charms 
are again in fashion. The ouija board rivals the type- 
writer in the production of literature. Palmistry is a 
popular pursuit. A mint of money has been made out 
of those who were willing to believe that the disease, 
sex, religion and race of a distant patient could be de- 
termined by electronic oscillations of a drop of blood 
or ink. Rain-making, one of the earliest of the magic 
arts, is today a profitable profession. Speaking with 
tongues, which Paul tried to eradicate from the church 
of Corinth, is a growing practice in certain of our 
sects. As David Starr Jordan says: “War lifted the 
lid on society, and secret actions and beliefs held in 
the dark now dance openly on every green.” 

Rosicrucianism has had a renaissance. The old 
Roman method of divination by the pendulum has been 
revived and apparatus consisting of a ball on the end 
of a thread is being sold for $2.00 to determine the sex 
of a chicken from the egg. The thirteenth seat in the 


126 THE REVIVAL OF WITCHCRAFT 


parlor car is hard to sell, and the thirteenth floor is 
eliminated from some of our newest hotels. Witchcraft 
has appeared again in the courts. In a recent French 
trial personal testimony and experimental evidence were 
brought forward in court to prove that the accused had 
killed people by sticking pins into their wax figures. 
Satan worship has become a cult and the Black Mass 
is celebrated in Paris. That Lord Carnarvon was the 
victim of Tutankhamen’s curse is commonly believed. 
Bleeding images appear in Ireland * and weeping virgins 
in France.? We see pictures of them in our papers. 
Necromancy, or communion with the spirits of the dead, 
is the fashionable faith of the hour. Sir Conan Doyle, 
doctor and detective, has published photographs of 
fairies. The Great War was most prolific in miracles. 
Volumes have been written on the visions and legends 
of this war. St. George and St. Jeanne d’Arc made up 
their ancient quarrel and fought on the same side, as 
numerous witnesses attest. In 1914 it was believed by 
many of the French people and soldiery, and even by 
some of their officers, that the sudden and mysterious 
shift of von Kluck’s forces to the east, which allowed 
Foch to strike at his exposed center and so saved Paris, 
was due to the apparition of Saint Joan with an army 
on the left of the invaders. The angels of Mons formed 
the theme of many a sermon and learned article, and the 
fact that the vision was traced back to a short story by 
Arthur Machen in a London daily did not shake faith in 
1 At Templemore, 1920. 


2“Le Procés de la Vierge qui pleure,’ Mercure de France, Oct. 
1920. 


MYTHS OF THE GREAT WAR 27 


it. The 80,000 Russian soldiers who were transported 
from Archangel to Scotland and down through Eng- 
land to France early in the war, were said to have 
been seen by many people en route. One lady who 
reported seeing them in a railway station said she 
knew they were Russians because “they wore their 
cossacks.” It seems this legend originated in 
the fact that the supply of Russian eggs was cut 
off when Petrograd was blockaded, and so the ex- 
porter telegraphed to the London house ‘80,000 Rus- 
sians shipped via Archangel.”’ Drake’s drum was heard 
again on the Devon shore as it had been prophesied that 
it would be in England’s hour of peril. Lord Kitch- 
ener’s mysterious disappearance gave rise to many wild 
legends that still persist. It is evident that Kitchener of 
Khartum has joined the immortal band of national 
heroes whose return is expected by their faithful ad- 
mirers: Barbarossa, Arthur, Roland, Drake, Charle- 
magne, Dmitri, Marko Kralyevich, Quetzalcoatl—I 
know there are some others, but I can’t think of them 
just now. 

There are various explanations advanced to explain 
the remarkable recrudescence of superstition since the 
war. Here is one by George S. Snoddy, Professor of 
Psychology in the University of Utah. 


The present trend toward mysticism, spiritism and the 
occult is directly due to the instability of mind produced 
by the world war. When the habits of thought slowly built 
up by looking at the world from certain definite points of 
view are quickly disintegrated through intense excitement 


128 THE REVIVAL OF WITCHCRAFT 


or shifting of viewpoints, there is temporary instability and 
a return to the cause-and-effect sequences of primitive man; 
hence spiritism.* 


But whether we can explain it or not the revival of 
superstition is one of the most striking and alarming 
symptoms of our times, especially since it seems to arise 
from a world-wide folk-movement. In England it is 
reported that “during the last ten or twelve years there 
has been a remarkable recrudescence of the amulet, or 
mascot.” * From Germany I recently received a 
learned pamphlet foretelling the imminent end of the 
world, with illustrations in color of the sun streaked 
with blood and the moon darkened. A distinguished 
chemist in Berlin writes me: 


The Wandervogel Movement is one of the many mani- 
festations of the spiritual inquietude of our time. Since 
the war a wave of uncertainty is sweeping over the old 
world. Theosophy, Spiritualism, Mazdaznan, Yogiism and 
various other symptoms of mania have each a community 
in all the large cities. We get an impression reminding us 
of the time when the Old Greek Polytheism was slowly 
disappearing and Christendom had not yet come in. Per- 
haps something quite new is on the march. In two hun- 
dred years from now the world will have a very different 
look. 


The railroad news stands sell astrologies but no as- 
tronomies. ‘The daily horoscope is a popular feature 


3 Quoted by Joseph Jastrow in “Spiritualism and Science,” in the 
American Review of Reviews. 
*See leader on “Modern Credulity,” in Nature, Aug. 4, 1921. 


THE RETURN OF THE DEMONS 129 


of many of our newspapers and if it is omitted from a 
single issue floods of letters come to ask for the missing 
number. Government officials, prominent politicians, 
and financiers are said to guide their affairs by the 
stars.° Perhaps that accounts for the way things are 
run. 

American missionaries sent over to China and Korea 
to convert the heathen become themselves converted 
to the prevailing demonology and bear testimony to 
the efficacy of exorcism.® A writer in a leading British 
review ascribes the wars and violence of the twentieth 
century to the throng of vampire spirits of those who, 
cut off from life suddenly and prematurely, seek to 
satisfy their lust or vengeance through the living.’ It 
is a gruesome picture he presents: 


Think of the enormous pressure which this mass of living 
“dead’ must exercise, is at this moment exercising, upon 
us! Think how easy it is to account, on this ground alone, 
for many of the crimes and errors of the human race! For 
we have the whole past of the human race encumbering us 
and pressing upon us; pressing upon us, not with any mere 
inert weight of historic precedent, but with the active force 
of numberless distinct, conscious, passionate personalities, 
all dying of hunger and thirst, so to speak, and all strenu- 


5 For an account of the alleged influence of Madame Marcia, the 
astrologer, on the career of President Harding see Collier’s, May 
16, 1925. 

6 See “Demon Possession,” by Rev. John L. Nevius, and “Korean 
Devils and Christian Missionaries,” by David K. Lambuth, Inde- 
pendent, Aug. 1, 1907, where quotations from the letters of fifteen 
missionaries are given. 

7“Optimism or Pessimism?” by George Barlow, in Contemporary 
Review. 


130 THE REVIVAL OF WITCHCRAFT 


ously endeavouring to appease that hunger, to assuage that 
thirst, by taking possession of and using the still warm- 
blooded, still available, frames and nervous systems of the 
living! 


The war revived the pagan practice of rhabdomancy, 
and the magic wand was used to find water on both 
sides the line. In 1920 two books were published in 
Paris ° in defense of its powers and in 1921 the French 
Academy of Sciences appointed a committee to study it. 
Germany has a weekly periodical devoted to the art.° 

The forked twig of witch-hazel and more pretentious 
divining rods are still much employed in the United 
States to discover water, oil, gold, and lost articles. 

Witchcraft is a disease of the imagination, but it is 
not an imaginary disease. Quite the contrary, it is a 
serious malady and very difficult to cure, especially 
when it becomes epidemic. Church and state united to 
stamp it out four hundred years ago, but their most 
severe measures were unavailing. We must in justice 
to our ancestors remember that although there never 
was really any such thing as witchcraft there really 
were witches, that is, malignant old women and evil- 
minded men who believed that they had and were 
believed by the community to have supernatural power 
to persecute their neighbors. It therefore was not un- 
natural that the Government should impose upon such 
undesirable citizens the same penalty applied in those 

8 By Mager and Landesque. See La Nature, June 4, 1921. 

9 Die Wiinschelrute. For the history of the subject see “On the 
So-Called Divining Rod,” by Prof. W. F. Barrett, in Proceedings 


of the Society for Psychical Research, Vols. XIII and XV. The use 
of the divining rod is condemned in Hosea 4:12. 


TELEPATHIC MURDER 131 


days to such minor misdemeanors as catching a hare 
or cutting down a tree on a private estate, namely, capi- 
tal punishment. But, although not unnatural, this 
policy of suppression was obviously unwise, because the 
more witches were found guilty and executed the more 
people believed in witchcraft. If the courts confirmed 
it who could doubt it? A delusion cannot be extracted 
from the brain by forceps from without like a bullet. 
It has to be expelled from within by direct action of 
the patient himself. It is a case of auto-intoxication 
and the only remedy is auto-expurgation. 

The general atmosphere is becoming so foggy with 
superstition that we may expect a revival of witchcraft 
mania and persecution to break out at any time even in 
our own enlightened land. 

William Jennings Bryan, dying at the close of his 
fight against evolution at Dayton, Tenn., is thought 
by many to have been “mentally assassinated by the 
hypnotic animus of anti-Christ, expressed principally 
through Roman Catholic pagans and anti-Christian 
Jews.” *° The spread of a popular belief in the possi- 
bility of exercising a malign influence at a distance by 
occult power has been found favorable in all ages to an 
outbreak of an epidemic of witchcraft. 

I recently met a young university woman who was 
doing extension work in a rural community where the 
purest Anglo-Saxon breed prevails, and who had been 
driven out with a shotgun on the ground that she taught 
witchcraft. She had been telling fairy stories to the 
children, and the local authorities argued that these 
stories were either false, in which case she was a liar, or 


10 The American Standard, Aug. 1 and July 1, 1925. 


132 THE REVIVAL OF WITCHCRAFT 


they were true, in which case they were witchcraft. 

The last prosecution under the witchcraft law in 
England took place in 1904, when Sir Alfred Harms- 
worth, editor of the Daily Mail, instituted proceedings 
against Professor and Madame Keiro, palmists and 
crystal gazers. The jury found them guilty both of 
fortune telling and of obtaining money under false pre- 
tenses, but the judge only took into consideration the 
latter count and suspended sentence at that. Instead 
of burning witches we advertise them. 

It may be thought that our proficiency in science and 
engineering will prevent any such recrudescence of su- 
perstition; but history does not give us hope of im- 
munity. Magic flourished in Mesopotamia at the time 
the Babylonians were raising skyscrapers that alarmed 
high heaven. The Romans consulted the entrails of 
animals when they laid the aqueducts and sewers of 
Rome. There are today more believers in magic, nec- 
romancy, astrology, divination, and other forms of 
witchcraft than there ever were. They may not form 
so large a proportion of the population as they did in 
ancient Assyria and Rome or medieval Europe, but 
they are more numerous because the population is much 
greater. 

Science rules in the laboratory and the machine shop. 
It does not yet hold sway over the mind of the people. 
The extension of science teaching in the public schools 
does not seem to have increased the liking and respect 
for science as much as was anticipated before it was 
introduced. ‘This is an age of science but not a scien- 
tific age. David Starr Jordan of Stanford points out 
that: 


A SAFER WORLD FOR FOOLS 133 


The recent recrudescence of superstition, a striking ac- 
companiment of an age of science, is in a sense dependent 
on science. Science has made it possible. The traditions 
of science are so diffused in the community at large that 
fools find it safe to defy them. Those who take hallucina- 
tions for realities; those whose memory impressions and 
motor dreams a defective will fails to control; those who 
mistake subjective sensations produced by disease or dis- 
order for objective conditions—all these sooner or later 
lose their place in the line. In falling out, they take with 
them the whole line of their possible descendants. .. . If 
all men sought healing from the blessed handkerchief of 
the lunatic, or from contact with old bones or old clothes; 
if all physicians used “revealed remedies” or the remedies 
“Nature finds” for each disease: if all business were con- 
ducted by faith: if all supposed “natural rights’ were rec- 
ognized in legislation, the insecurity of these beliefs would 
speedily appear. Not only civilization, but civilized man 
himself, would vanish from the earth. The long and 
dreary road of progress through fool-killing would for cen- 
turies be traversed again. That is strong which endures. 
Might does not make right, but that which is right will 
justify itself as the basis of race stability.“ 


In fact the machinery of science may be employed to 
defeat the aims of science, as the spread of the power 
of Christian nations has multiplied the number of 
heathen. Opportunity does not insure progress. Chris- 
tian missionaries like Livingstone rejoiced over the 
opening up of Africa by commerce and communications 
because they naturally and naively assumed that it 
meant the advance of Christianity. On the contrary it 
led to an unprecedented spread of Mohammedanism, 


11 The Stability of Truth, p. 57. 


134 THE REVIVAL OF WITCHCRAFT 


their most formidable foe. The printing press contrib- 
utes to the propagation of superstition and obscuran- 
tism as well as to the promulgation of religion and 
science. In our books and magazines fiction outweighs 
fact by many thousand tons. Radio has given Voliva 
the chance to broadcast his gospel of a flat earth from 
WCBD, Zion City, all around the world. Radio has 
also afforded an opportunity for a new form of an 
ancient mode of divination, the sortes Homerice or 
sortes Biblice. Instead of opening by chance a volume 
of the Iliad or the Bible and taking the first passage the 
eye lights upon as a message from heaven, the up-to- 
date occultist when in doubt or distress goes to the radio 
receiver with the eyes shut and turns the dials till he or 
she hears a fragment of speech or song that may be in- 
terpreted as an answer to the problem or a guide to ac- 
tion. 

It is almost hopeless to combat a widespread wave of 
superstition. Its causes are unknown and its course is 
incalculable. It is cosmic in its scope, and no nation, 
perhaps no individual, can altogether escape its infu- 
ence while the pendulum of the world’s thought is on its 
backward swing. The best any one can do is to give 
his own brain a thorough housecleaning at least once a 
year, peering into every dark corner, wiping out the 
medieval dirt, and burning up every rag of superstition 
that may serve to shelter and to spread the pandemic. 

Housecleaning time, when every article of furniture 
from cellar to garret is handled and dusted, occurs tra- 
ditionally each spring. An annual purification of the 
spiritual nature, when we overhaul and furbish up our 
morals, is set by liturgical churches in Lent and by 


MIND-CLEARING TIME 135 


other churches with similar regularity in the revival 
season following the Week of Prayer. The systematic 
cleansing of our bodies is placed on the calendar as a 
regular order of business at diurnal or at least hebdom- 
adal intervals. But there is no set period for intel- 
lectual purification, and, naturally enough in the stress 
of daily work, this is neglected. 

Yet it is quite as important to keep our minds in good 
condition as our houses, our consciences, or our bodies. 
A false belief may make more trouble in the world than 
a wrong intention. No priest or church has ever ex- 
aggerated the importance of a right creed. The only 
faults of the heresy hunters are in their narrow defini- 
tion of orthodoxy and the strenuous methods they adopt 
for securing it. A little lying is a dangerous thing, 
especially if you get the habit. Cherish no illusions; 
they are liable to change into delusions. Have no blind 
spots in your eye except those you were born with. 

Errors breed errors. They multiply like microbes, 
especially through neglect. A single false belief may 
infect all the sound facts you pile in on top of it. 

It may not take so much time for the annual inven- 
tory of your ideas as you may think, but in any case it 
is worth doing. Take down each principle and funda- 
mental theorem from the shelves, valuate it and see 
that it is in sound condition, not worm-eaten or moth- 
bitten or rusty or out of date. One can never know 
when he is going to need one of his ideas, but when he 
does, it must be in serviceable condition. Very few of 
us have so wide a range of intellectual activity that all 
our ideas are kept bright from frequent use. We have 
to go around and polish them up occasionally. Don’t 


136 THE REVIVAL OF WITCHCRAFT 


hesitate to send your antiquated mental machinery to 
the scrap heap and to put in new. The mind is a 
thought factory, not a museum of antiquities. 


Oh, the road to En-dor is the oldest road 
And the craziest road of all! 
Straight it runs to the Witch’s abode, 
As it did in the days of Saul, 
And nothing has changed of the sorrows in store 
For such as go down on the road to En-dor! 7” 


12 Rudyard Kipling. 


THE USES OF ADVERSITY 


Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son 
whom he receiveth.—HEBREWS 12: 6. 


WHEN modern science began to examine critically 
the ladder by which man has climbed to his present 
position it was found that every step was stained with 
blood; that life was war, and suffering the common lot 
of all; that animals preyed upon plants, and man upon 
animals and bacteria upon man, a cycle of suffering; 
that every species was an Ishmael; that birds and but- 
terflies were not the careless, joyous things the poet 
thought them, living only for beauty and pleasure, but 
were engaged in a terrible struggle for existence; that 
the song of birds was a war-cry and the adornment of 
the butterfly was merely war-paint. It was found that 
there was awful waste in nature, waste of time, waste 
of work, waste of life. Of a million seeds sown by the 
wind only one lived. A thousand eggs were cast upon 
the waters to produce one fish. A hundred men labored 
and sweat that one might rise. It was an awful revela- 
tion, that of science fifty years ago. No wonder that it 
drove men insane; made them pessimists, atheists. If 
science had stopped here it would have been a gospel of 
despair. 

But it did not stop; another step changed it to a 
gospel of hope. It was discovered that this suffering, 
that looked to a casual glance like an impediment to 


progress, was really its cause; that pain was the main- 
137 


138 THE USES OF ADVERSITY 


spring of the universe; that war was.the mother of all 
things, as the Greek had said long ago; that the rod of 
affliction was the modeling tool by which God created 
all living things; that there could have been no happi- 
ness now if there had been no suffering in the past; that 
joy is the offspring of sorrow, out of war comes peace 
and through death comes life. This changed the whole 
view. It put optimism in the place of pessimism. Man 
could see the uses of adversity. 

There was a time when there was no suffering in the 
world. But that was when there was no life; when the 
earth was without form and void and darkness was 
upon the face of the deep. With life came suffering, 
which increased as life increased. Progress may be 
defined as increase in the capacity for suffering. A 
stone does not feel pain, possibly a plant does. Ancient 
animals suffered less than their descendants. ‘The gi- 
gantic saurians that used to creep across our western 
plains were as big as a house, but their brains could 
have been put into a teacup. Not much chance for 
pain there. And finally man came, a creature built 
upon a new and improved plan; but his chief endow- 
ment was that he was able to suffer more. Several new 
kinds of suffering were invented expressly for him. He 
alone of all the animals suffers in anticipation of coming 
perils, and grieves over the errors of the past. It is the 
greater capacity for misery that has made men what 
they are. These are they who have come up out of 
great tribulation. 

The earliest animals were built to avoid suffering. 
They were as big as an animal could be and walk. The 
sensitive parts were protected, as in our modern iron- 


DEATH AN AID TO LIFE 139 


clads, by defensive armor as thick as could be carried; 
hide and scales almost impenetrable. Now these ani- 
mals are all extinct. They were beaten in the struggle 
for existence, and by what? By little animals with the 
nerves on the outside. The animals that were easiest 
hurt conquered those that were most protected. Now 
our museums are filled with the relics of these obsolete 
forms, models of inventions that did not work well, as 
on the walls is hanging the armor of the knights of the 
Middle Ages, who were beaten by men without armor. 
The best protected animal now in existence is the clam; 
the least protected is the man. To try to escape suffer- 
ing is not a good plan. It has been tried on a large 
scale, and it does not work. Don’t be a clam. 

There was a time when there was no death in the 
world. This was long after the creation of living be- 
ings; if by death we mean a definite and certain period 
of life. The protozoa, the simplest organisms, are im- 
mortal. They do not die a natural death, although 
they can be killed. These tiny specks of protoplasm 
grow and divide, but we cannot say that one part is 
the parent of the other. It is the same individual, only 
separated into two parts for convenience. It lives and 
grows as long as the proper conditions prevail; not 
merely for threescore years and ten, but for thousands 
of years. In fact, the first created speck of protoplasm 
is. living yet, divided into innumerable parts. Later 
there came beings that died—spontaneously, at the end 
of a given time. It was apparently a great disadvan- 
tage that an animal should die when it had acquired the 
strength and skill of maturity, and that a new individual 
should have to pass through the period of helpless in- 


140 THE USES OF ADVERSITY 


fancy. But the animals that died progressed and devel- 
oped, while those that did not die remained stationary. 
Death came into the world that we might have a fuller 
and completer life. 

Now we see more clearly what is meant by the many 
mysterious sayings in the Bible, that benefits arise 
from afflictions, that good comes out of evil, and life 
comes from death. People used to believe these state- 
ments; yes, they were doubtless true, but in some hazy 
mystical sense, nobody knew how. Now we know that 
they are not imaginative, but plain statements of fact; 
they are not figurative, but literally true. 

We now know something of the benefits of suffering 
in the past, but why do we have to suffer? We see 
that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in 
pain till now, because it has brought forth ws—but why 
does the labor continue? Here is man; intelligent man, 
who knows some things and thinks he knows it all; 
civilized man, except for occasional lapses into bar- 
barism; man who stands erect, except when he crawls 
into some meanness; man with the moral law written in 
his heart, which he follows whenever he thinks it is 
good policy; man, who knows God and prays to him 
whenever he gets into trouble; man, proud man, looks 
up to his Creator and says: “Here am I, the end and 
aim of all the creation. I am worth all the pain and 
suffering that I have cost other beings, but don’t carry 
this any further. Let us have peace.” 

This is no caricature. You will find substantially 
this view of the position of man in dozens of theological 
and scientific works. Of all created beings man is cer- 
tainly endowed with the greatest capacity for conceit. 


DO UNTO OTHERS 141 


Where knowledge ends, faith begins. The more we 
know of God’s dealings in the past, the better is our 
foundation for our faith in the future. No suffering has 
been in vain; so ours, too, must have its use. We are 
now reaping the reward of the sufferings of others. Our 
happiness has its roots in a soil watered by the tears of 
untold generations. Animals and men, innocent and 
guilty, have suffered for us. They gave themselves as 
living sacrifices for a people they were not to see, for a 
_ cause they did not know. 

What are we going to do about it? How can we 
repay the sacrifices that others have made for us? 
Christ has told us. By sacrificing ourselves for others, 
for those around us and those who are to follow, for our 
neighbors and our posterity. We are to do for others 
what others have already done for us. We are to take 
up the cross, Christ’s cross, the symbol of unmerited 
suffering, the emblem of sacrifice for others, and fol- 
low him. 


LOOKING BACKWARD AND LIVING FORWARD 


(A Baccalaureate Sermon) 


| This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, 
and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press to- 
ward the mark—Philippians 3: 13-14. 


OBVIOUS as it is, it seems strange that we are so con- 
structed that we have knowledge only of the things that 
are of no use to us, the things of the past, and have no 
knowledge of the things that we are to use, the things 
of the future. We are told to look before we leap, but 
this, like other Die advice, is literally impossible 
to foto 

Our life is ahead of us, and this is as true of the old 
as of the young. Our actions, our thoughts, our inten- 
tions, our desires are necessarily directed toward the 
future. We have no control over the past, and so we 
have little interest in it. We front one way. There 
was a little girl who made that discovery for herself. 
Her mother was trying to teach her the art of buttoning 
her dress behind, which, I am told, is an art very diffi- 
cult of acquirement. The little girl gave the reason for 
it. “Why, mamma, how can I? I’m in front of my- 
self.” 

Now it seems a desirable arrangement on the whole, 
that our eyes, our arms, and our feet should all work 
in the same direction, that is, forward. It is only in 


emergencies like that referred to that it is awkward. 
142 


MR. FACING-BOTH-WAYS 143 


But when we come to consider how we are placed in 
time we find that it is different from space. Our action 
is still directed forward but our look is directed back- 
ward. It seems as if a mistake had been made in man’s 
construction, as if his head had been set wrong upon 
his shoulders, like the mismatched animal we used to 
draw in collaboration by folding over the paper. He 
can only walk forward and can only look backward. 
He can never see where he is going, only where he has 
been. He wants to see the road ahead of him and he 
can only gaze on his own footprints, often a dishearten- 
ing spectacle. I know of nothing so awkward except 
a man rowing a boat who must look at his wake instead 
of his port. 

The ancients, struck by this anomaly in man’s con- 
stitution, imagined beings not so hampered; the twin 
giants, Prometheus who looked forward and Epime- 
theus who looked backward; Janus who had two faces, 
directed toward past and future. 

But while mythology was dreaming of beings better 
adapted to their temporal environment, science was 
endeavoring to overcome the difficulty by devising 
means by which man could get some glimpses of the 
road in front of him. It may be said that the intellec- 
tual history of mankind is a record of the efforts made 
by man to screw his head around on his shoulders so 
he could look before as well as after. The highest 
achievement of the human mind is the development of 
the power of prophecy. It is no wonder that we are 
fond of saying, “I told you so.” It is the proudest 
boast that one can make. 

Knowledge of the future is the most useful knowl. 


144 LOOKING BACKWARD—LIVING FORWARD 


edge we can have. Indeed, it is the only useful knowl- 
edge we can have. Reading history is as unsatisfac- 
tory as reading a guide book to Japan when we are go- 
ing to Switzerland. There is no guide book to that un- 
known land into which we are to travel. We would 
prefer to read history of the United States from 1926 
to 1976, rather than any other period since the world 
began. Our own biographies would be more interest- 
ing to us than the biography of the greatest man who 
ever lived. But the history of the period 1926 to 1976 
is not to be studied by us. It has to be made by us. 
All the world’s a stage and we come on to this stage 
with our parts unlearned, with no knowledge of our 
cues, with only a faint conception of our own role or the 
roles of the other actors, for we have never heard the 
plot of the play and never have had a rehearsal. If 
under those circumstances we can make a creditable 
appearance and performance, what skillful actors we 
must be! The drama of life requires a nimbleness of 
wit like that of the early Italian plays, where parts were 
assigned but the dialogue and action had to be extem- 
porized. 

You can buy today’s paper for two or three cents, 
get yesterday’s paper for nothing. If you could buy to- 
morrow’s paper for $100 you would jump at the chance. 
It would be a better bargain than today’s paper at 
two cents. Let us assume that you have a chance to 
buy tomorrow’s daily. Not a whole and perfect copy 
but a scrap, a part of a page, not a well printed copy, 
but a smudged and almost illegible imprint, not abso- 
lutely accurate either, but, like yesterday’s paper, con- 
taining many false statements and mistakes. Even that 


NEWSPAPER PROPHETS 145 


would be worth something, would it not? Well, that is 
about what you can get now. For our newspapers are 
now part of prophecy, and some of it true prophecy. 
The paper today tells what the weather will be tomor- 
row, and it hits it right about eighty per cent of the 
time. It tells us when the sun will rise and the tide will 
fall to the second. It tells you what meetings and din- 
ners are going to be held, generally correctly. It tells 
whether stocks are going up or down, though I do not 
advise you to place any financial dependence on that. 
It tells you which party is going to win in the next elec- 
tion and is right half of the time. It even goes so far 
as to foretell what sort of clothes the ladies are going 
to wear next season, which has always seemed to me 
the most wonderful manifestation of the power of 
prophecy. 

I do not mean to exaggerate the prophetic power of 
editors. JI would merely call your attention to the 
fact that it is a part of the journalistic work and the 
most important and the most difficult part of it. A 
paper or magazine that is always foretelling things that 
do not come to pass is discredited, or ought to be more 
often than it is. A periodical is of value to us in so far 
as it is able from the fullness of its information and the 
prescience of its editors to give some idea of what is 
likely to happen. Some things are and always will be 
beyond the power of the wisest men, even editors. It 
is easier to predict big things than little. It is easier to 
predict consequences than causes. No one predicted 
long in advance that a Serbian fanatic would assas- 
sinate an Austrian archduke, but many predicted the 
war. 


146 LOOKING BACKWARD—LIVING FORWARD 


Men who have done most in the world have been the 
men who had that insight which is foresight, who could 
read the signs of the times and reason from cause to 
effect, men who could screw their heads around a little 
more than the rest of us and catch a glimpse of what 
is before us. Such a man can use his power for self- 
advancement or for the benefit of all. He may bet 
on the races, or speculate in real estate or go into poli- 
tics, and win fortune or fame for himself. Or he may 
become a public prophet, working for the public profit, 
if you will permit me to put it so, telling people what 
good results will come from the adoption of a certain 
policy, or, warning them of the evil consequences of 
present tendencies, more often the latter, for somehow 
it is always easier to prophesy bad fortune than good. 

The earliest records in Egypt and Chaldea, painted on 
papyrus or stamped on clay, show that at the very be- 
ginning of civilization men’s faces were hopefully turn- 
ing toward the future, too hopefully in fact, for it has 
taken many thousand years of steady thought and ob- 
servation to clear away the rubbish they heaped up, 
to find out we don’t know so much as they thought 
they did, the soothsayers, and magicians and astrologers 
of old. But we should do honor to these wise men of 
Chaldea and Egypt for what they tried to do and what 
they did. They were the first scientists, for the essence 
of science is prophecy. Think what a bold act of faith 
that was to be the first to assert that 2 times 2 will make 
4—not have made 4 or make 4 but will everywhere 
and always and for all. And then that unknown genius 
who made that still higher flight into the unknown and 
boldly announced his belief that 12 times 12 would 


ASTROLOGY AND ASTRONOMY 147 


make 144. He made good, and mankind thereby 
stepped upward to a higher plane, standing henceforth 
upon the multiplication table. 

Now among the clay tablets that record these won- 
derful things about numbers and equally strange things 
about angles and squares and circles, are found other 
prophecies of varying value, telling how long next year 
would be and when the next eclipse was coming; also 
directions for finding out when the king was going to 
die and who was going to beat in the war. This is 
where these ancient seers went astray. They were 
tempted to pretend to know more about the future than 
they did, even as you and I are tempted now. The 
king and the common man did not care so much about 
the next eclipse as about how to make money and 
whether she would marry him or not. So the wise men 
of the East applied their astronomical knowledge to 
the affairs of men and it did not work, but they pre- 
tended it did because it was profitable. It was found 
that men did not move in simple orbits like the stars. 
So their science was split into two parts; astronomy, 
the part that worked and that we have kept to this day, 
and astrology, the part that did not work and nobody 
believes in now except those who are still living in the 
Chaldean age. But don’t blame the astrologers for 
trying to foretell deaths and marriages as well as 
eclipses and conjunctions; only blame them for holding 
on to the idea after they knew it would not work. Let 
me here give you a piece of practical advice. Look out 
for two things—pick up an idea at the right time and 
drop it at the right time. Just follow this simple rule 
and you will get along all right. The seers and augurs 


148 LOOKING BACKWARD—LIVING FORWARD 


made a mistake that is often made yet, when a man 
thinks that he can explain all of biology by the laws 
of chemistry and all of sociology by biology. They 
made this common mistake of carrying a thing too far. 

Science, then, had its origin in the effort to predict 
the future; and that remains its present purpose, its 
reason for existence. There is a strong contrast at this 
point between the temperament of the scientist and that 
of the historian or, let me say rather, the antiquarian; 
for a historian may have the scientific temperament. 
Both are inevitably confined to the study of what has 
happened, but the scientist picks out from the multi- 
tudinous records of the past only what seems to 
him likely to be repeated in some similar form in 
the future, while the antiquarian is interested es- 
pecially in what can never happen again. The 
antiquarian values things according to their rarity. 
The scientist values things according to their common- 
ness. The antiquarian values a book that is unique, an 
event that is unique. The scientist has no use at all for 
an event that is unique, if there can be such a thing. 
He is searching for the common element in the rare ob- 
jects he is studying; the common factor in all happen- 
ings. Poincaré says that mathematics is the art of 
giving the same name to different things. The more 
universal a law, the more highly it is prized. Newton 
is esteemed one of the greatest scientists because he dis- 
covered the greatest commonplace, the law of gravita- 
tion that drops an apple on a man’s head and pulls the 
planets into their orbits. Iron is the commonest thing 
in the world; that is why it is so valuable. Water is 
worth more than wine. The diamond is the least valu- 


THE ANTIQUARIAN SPIRIT 149 


able form of carbon. Wisdom is more to be sought 
than rubies and fine gold, because when it is found 
there is always enough of it to go around. Nobody can 
monopolize it. 

The antiquarian seeks the exception. The scientist 
seeks the rule. The antiquarian wants a variety. The 
scientist wants the common weal. The antiquarian 
searches for a curiosity. The scientist has a curiosity 
that makes him search. 

This distinction between the historical and the scien- 
tific point of view is important because it lies at the 
basis of the mutual misunderstanding and mistrust, 
sometimes rising to the point of antagonism, between 
these two wings of a college faculty. The historian 
seems to the scientist to value facts for their own sake, 
while the scientist goes after the facts that seem likely 
to have a bearing upon some universal principle that 
may be applied in the future. A glaring example of the 
extravagances of the antiquarian spirit is to be found 
in the article on “Typography” in the Encyclopedia 
Britannica, where twenty pages of its valuable space 
are taken up by a discussion, based upon an enormous 
amount of scholarly research, of the claims of Guten- 
berg and Coster for priority in the use of movable 
type. Of course no one can tell what fact may turn 
out to be significant, but I confess I cannot conceive 
that finding out when or where or by whom the first 
page of type was set could have any possible bearing 
on what history can teach us about the nature and 
destiny of the human race. It is too late to apply for 
a patent on printing. Printing is one of the most im- 
portant factors in the history of the world, but do we 


150 LOOKING BACKWARD—LIVING FORWARD 


really need to know anything more about its origin 
than that “books printed from movable type were 
published in Germany and the Netherlands about 1445- 
14557? 

The difference of attitude between the scientist and 
the historian is admirably illustrated by Poincaré, the 
French mathematician :* 


Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. 
But a collection of*facts is no more a science than a heap 
of stones is a house. 

And above all the scientist must foresee. Carlyle has 
somewhere said something like this: “Nothing but facts 
are of importance. John Lackland passed by here. Here 
is something that is admirable. Here is a reality for which 
I would give all the theories in the world.” ? Carlyle was 
a fellow countryman of Bacon; but Bacon would not have 
said that. That is the language of the historian. The 
physicist would say rather: “John Lackland passed by 
here; that makes no difference to me, for he never will 
pass this way again.” 


Antiquarianism is exclusive; science is democratic. 
The one treasures; the other shares. We can see the 
effect of the antiquarian spirit most conspicuously in 
the sale of old books and objects of art. The first and 
poorest edition brings more than the latest and best. 
An only copy of a book that is not worth republishing 
may sell for thousands of dollars. The trick of the 
Cumezan sibyl, who burnt part of her books to raise 

1 Science and Hypothesis, p. 127. 

21 think Poincaré refers to the passage at the end of Chapter I, 


Book II of Carlyle’s Past and Present, but he does not quote ac- 
curately. 


THE FALLACY OF ANTIQUITY 15] 


the price of the rest, has become a common business 
practice. The purchaser of an etching receives with it 
a scratched print, showing that the plate is destroyed, 
so he can rejoice his poor selfish soul that only forty- 
nine or ninety-nine other persons in the world can have 
the same pleasure as he. 

But monopoly and antiquity cannot really add to the 
value of a picture or a book, although they may raise 
its price. The only proper way to value books, pic- 
tures, and everything else, is by reference to the future. 
That is the scientific method, the business way. The 
historical method is to consider what has been the in- 
terest and influence of a book. But real practical 
pragmatic present-day value may be quite different 
from the historical value. Some works of art grow old; 
some grow young. Some lose value, some increase in 
value, not merely in antiquarian value through age 
and rarity but real value based on present and pro- 
spective usefulness. So we call them immortal works. 
They flow like perennial springs. 

This may be due to the genius of the author, or it 
may be due to a misinterpretation of him—no matter 
which it is. A book is of value for what we can get 
out of it, which is often something much better and 
finer than what the author put into it. Exactly what 
the author meant we sometimes cannot find out and 
usually we do not care. We are entitled to all we can 
read into it. Don’t take a man’s word for what he has 
accomplished. Don’t take any man’s word for it. Wait 
and see. We credit Columbus with discovery of the 
New World, and rightly. But in the eyes of his con- 
temporaries, he was a failure, because he did not suc- 


152 LOOKING BACKWARD—LIVING FORWARD 


ceed in what he tried to do, reach India by going west, 
but accomplished something very much greater. 

Real market prices are always prospective. If you 
want to learn how little past value has to do with pres- 
ent value, try to sell off some of your books, your fur- 
niture, or your clothes, and see how little you get for 
them. For what you sell with your old clothes is the 
wear that can be got out of them; not the wear that you 
have got out of them, for that account is settled and 
closed. We are all of us dealing in futures. It is the 
only legitimate business. A merchant when he takes an 
inventory of his stock does not go to the bills and mark 
everything, say ten per cent above what he paid. No, 
he marks some a little above, some a great deal above 
and some below their cost. He prices them at what 
they will bring as nearly as he can guess. If he does 
not guess right he goes into bankruptcy. The restau- 
rant keeper must be able to tell in advance with con- 
siderable closeness how many of his chance customers 
tomorrow will choose apple pie and how many will 
choose mince pie. He must know it better than the 
pie-eaters themselves. The gents’ furnisher must guess 
how many men will come into his shop next week and 
what is the size of their necks to a quarter of an inch. 
If he is very far wrong in his figuring on futures he will 
lose money by stocking up with goods that he cannot 
sell or running short of goods that he might have sold. 
For the business man must be a prophet if he is to 
succeed, so must we all of us if we succeed in anything. 
And other things being equal our success will be com- 
mensurate with our prophetic powers. For in order 
to do right we must see right, and that involves seeing 


REAL VALUE IS FUTURE VALUE 153 


the end from the beginning. Teleology is the aim of all 
the ologies. 

What is true of material things is no less true of the 
intangible things that we inherit and transmit; lan- 
guage, science, customs, political institutions, the forms 
of religion, their real value is their future value. We 
must be constantly revaluing them, marking them over 
as a shopkeeper does his goods, sometimes higher and 
sometimes lower. 

But we neglect to keep our price current up to date. 
We fail, through timidity and laziness, to reappraise the 
goods we have inherited from our forefathers. Each 
generation bequeaths to the succeeding things far more 
costly than houses and lands—such things as words, 
ideals, conventions, art, literature, laws, many of them 
very precious in our sight, for we have purchased them 
with toil and blood. But what they will be worth to 
you of the coming generation, you must find out. Don’t 
be too hasty about the decision. Don’t mark down the 
goods simply because they are old, because, as I have 
been trying to explain, age has nothing to do with fixing 
values. But on the other hand don’t neglect to submit 
your inherited property to the process of revaluation. 
It is a terrible responsibility that is being placed upon 
you as you enter into the heritage of our civilization, 
the accumulated wisdom of the ages. I must confess 
that we elders entrust it to you with a good deal of 
hesitation and apprehension. We would not do it if we 
could help it. We hand over the old blue china teacup 
we have kept in the corner cabinet with fear and trem- 
bling lest you drop and smash it. You are such careless 
children. You do not seem to appreciate as much as 


154 LOOKING BACKWARD—LIVING FORWARD 


you might some of the things we have worked hard for. 
So we are going to hold on to things till we have to let 
go and in the meantime give you plenty of warning and 
impress upon you so far as we can our own sense of 
values. But we realize after all that it is you who must 
determine for yourself what of all we give you, you will 
keep, and what you will replace with novelties. 

But my object in talking to you today is not merely 
to impress you with a sense of responsibility for the 
task of the revaluation of civilization that you must 
inevitably assume. My object is rather to give you the 
rule for the valuation of all things; and this is, find 
out if you can, what the things are for. Look to the 
future, rather than toward the past, for the explana- 
tions you want. 

When you were children—if you were the normal and 
intelligent children I presume you were—you ran 
around asking ““Why?” about everything. It is a good 
habit. I hope you have kept it up ever since and will 
keep it up through life. But maybe like most of us 
you have in large part given it up in the course of years. 
You probably got tired of asking ‘“‘Why?” because of 
the unsatisfactory nature of the replies. Sometimes 
you did not get any and sometimes you got only half 
the answer, which is about as bad. 

For all the problems of life have two answers, like 
quadratic equations, and it is of the highest importance 
that you get both of them. ‘Why?’ is really a double 
question in one word. It means both “How comes it?” 
and “What for?” Of these two answers, one, you see, 
is to be sought in the past and the other in the future. 
One is the cause and the other the reason. Why do you 


THE ANCHORS OF MORALITY 155 


eat? Because you are hungry. That is one answer; 
that is the cause. Because you will gain strength for 
the future. That is the other answer; that is the rea- 
son. Why do you sleep? Because you are sleepy; yes, 
but also because you want to get rested. Why do you 
exercise? The cause is the momentary pleasure of it; 
the reason is the future benefit. And so it is with all 
the desires, affections, and passions of life. They have 
their reasons as well as their causes, and to ignore 
them is to become sensuous and materialistic. 

Our code of morality has this double sanction of past 
and future. It is anchored like a ship in the harbor, 
fore and aft. If either anchor chain breaks the ship 
swings and is in danger of floundering. Why do this, 
or why not do that? There are always two answers. 
You ask a child “Why don’t you play with the fire?” 
and he may answer, “ ’Cause mamma told me not to.” 
It would be a correct and, so far as he knows, a com- 
plete answer. Yet it is only half the truth. ‘Because 
he would get burnt” is the other answer. The causal 
answer is the mother’s command, and this is all the - 
child knows. The rational answer, which as always lies 
hid in the future, the child may have to find out for 
himself by painful experience. 

Why not tell a lie? Here again split up the “Why?” 
into its two objects. One answer is to be found in the 
past, implied in the Ten Commandments. The other 
answer, that of the future, you have doubtless divined 
if you have had much to do with people who told lies. 

But it is not always so simple. In regard to most of 
our morals we are still but children. Somebody has 
told us not to do something, but has not given us the 


156 LOOKING BACKWARD—LIVING FORWARD 


reason. We know that it is best to obey, but not 
exactly why. Probably we shall never know altogether. 
We get rapped over the knuckles by church, state, and 
society for doing this and that, and when we ask ‘““What 
for?” they can’t tell us. But don’t get to thinking that 
there is no reason because nobody knows the reason. 
Reasons are hid in the future and the wisest of men 
cannot see very clearly into the future. 

There is a stage in the development of some young 
men and women, perhaps of all, when they begin to see 
the causes of things and do not yet catch sight of the 
reasons for things. It is called the period of disillu- 
sion. The child accepts things naively, as they are, 
at their face value, without asking Wherefore? or What 
for? But as he grows older he begins to wonder and 
inquire about the origin of things. The reply “‘ "Cause 
tis” no longer satisfies him. The age of inquiry is fol- 
lowed by the age of skepticism. For the youthful in- 
quirer gets as his first answer to his questions the cause, 
not the reason. This is natural, for the cause is easiest 
to grasp. We are nowadays learning the causes of 
much of what we see and do, thanks to modern science, 
but we yet know very little about their reasons. We 
cannot hope ever to know much about the latter. How 
mankind came into existence, the study of evolution 
has done much to explain. Why mankind came into 
existence, evolution does not yet explain at all and 
never can explain altogether. 

So when the young man or woman begins to inquire 
seriously into the meaning of life he takes the first an- 
swer he gets for all the answer there is. He is not 
always to blame for this, for sometimes his teachers, 


THE FALLACY OF “NOTHING BUT” = 157 


who are employed for the express purpose of answer- 
ing his questions, do not give him any other answer, 
or even intimate to him that there is any further an- 
swer to be given. So he gets an idea that he knows it 
all and acts accordingly. He discovers that the flag 
is but a piece of cloth like any other and calls it so, 
thereby shocking his soldier friend, who risked his life 
for it. He traces back marriage to a primitive stage of 
capture and slavery and declares that that is all it 
amounts to now. He reads up on the early history of 
religion and it brings him into a mess of superstitions 
and tyranny, so he will have nothing to do with it. He 
turns every coat inside out and discovering that it has a 
seamy side insists upon wearing it that way. He makes 
the discovery—and believes that he is the first ever to 
have made it—that our manners and customs, our 
political and religious ideas, our social and business 
forms, are largely built up on conventions; thereupon 
he denounces them all as “the conventional lies of civi- 
lization” and would return to savagery, until he learns 
that the savage has more conventions and conventions 
of more absurd kinds than we. 

The child who cut open his drum to find out what 
it was made of, found out, but forever lost the possi- 
bility of finding what it was made for. This is, as I 
said, a dangerous stage to one passing through it. It 
is ruinous to one who never finds his way out of it. 
He becomes a materialist and a pessimist; unable to 
contribute to the progress of humanity because he can- 
not conceive of progress. To understand progress, still 
more to take part in it, requires the ability to look for- 
ward. The materialist is a statist. He is more con- 


158 LOOKING BACKWARD—LIVING FORWARD 


servative than the conservatives, for he does not admit 
the idea of change. If property was robbery in the 
beginning, property is robbery now, he assumes. If 
marriage was slavery, marriage is slavery. If govern- 
ment was founded on force, government is founded on 
force. If religion was superstition, religion is supersti- 
tion. If a man was a beast, man is a beast. And so 
on to the end of the chapter. 

Such a man is blind to the future because he is look- 
ing backward. Now in looking backward he can some- 
times tell what things were, rarely what they are, and 
almost never what they will be. He is blind to the 
better part of our literature as he is blind to the es- 
sence of our civilization, for the language of the higher 
passions, of patriotism, love, and religion, is necessarily 
conventional, symbolic. This is because the higher 
passions and the deeper emotions cannot be fully ex- 
pressed in any language yet existing. So the poets and 
the prophets have to speak in a foreign tongue, using 
our words, but not in the literal and ordinary sense, be- 
cause our words are not suited to them. They have 
to invent a language of their own, because they look 
to the future, where lies their reason. They need a 
language of the future and even Esperanto will not do. 
The better part of theology is eschatology. All true 
religion is prophetic, all true art is prophetic, all true 
science is prophetic, all true politics is prophetic. They 
all have their eyes fixed on something seen afar, invisi- 
ble to common gaze and not to be described in common 
language, which can only describe things seen and 
known, that is, things past. All true love is prophetic. 
Why does a young man fall in love with a particular 


THE SNARE OF WORDS 159 


girl? Is it the shape of a nose, the curve of a lock of 
hair? It means more, a lifelong companionship, the 
founding of home, the raising of family. 

It is therefore absurd to ask people to say exactly 
what they mean; they cannot when they mean very 
much. It is only our trivialities and commonplaces that 
can find language perfectly adequate to their expres- 
sion. We can tell the whole truth only when there is 
not much to tell. We cannot afford to take words at 
their face value any more than we can take men, 
theories, and institutions at their face value. Some- 
times they mean more, sometimes less. Do not think 
that you can get their real value by their history. You 
cannot always tell what a word means by tracing it to 
its origin. You are getting further away from its mean- 
ing the further back you go. ‘The cause is not the 
reason. The answer to a problem is found at the end. 
The moral to a fable is found at the end. The point to 
a joke is found at the end. So whether life is a prob- 
lem, a fable, or a joke, its meaning is to be sought in 
its end. 

This distinction between the cause and the purpose 
of things, between how-comes-it and what-for, is origi- 
nal but not new. After I had thought it out for my- 
self, with more hard thinking than you would suppose, 
seeing how glibly I talk about it, I happened to turn to 
Plutarch’s ‘‘Pericles” and found that he had stated the 
point clearly in the following passage: 


Now there was nothing in my opinion, to prevent both 
of them, the naturalist and the seer, from being in the right 
of the matter; the one correctly divined the cause, the 


160 LOOKING BACKWARD—LIVING FORWARD 


other the object or purpose. It was the proper province of 
the one to observe why anything happens, and how it comes 
to be what it is: of the other to declare for what purpose 
anything happens and what it means. 


But I am glad I did not read Plutarch till after I 
had worked out the idea for myself because I would 
not have appreciated its tremendous importance in the 
interpretation of nature, ethics, and religion. We have 
nowadays many more naturalists than seers. Seers 
were never more needed. Darwinism has not, in my 
opinion, banished teleology from biology but has merely 
buried it deeper. Bergson in his Creative Evolution is 
one of the seers who are trying to dig it up again. | 

Allied to the mistaking the cause for the reason is 
mistaking the material for the object. What is a 
statue? It may quite justifiably be called a block of 
marble. It can be weighed as such by the physicist and 
analyzed as such by the chemist. Its remarkable form 
can be completely accounted for by the chisel strokes 
of the sculptor, these by the blows of the hammer, 
these by the power of the muscles, this by the poten- 
tial energy of the food eaten, this can be traced back 
to the rddiant energy of the sun; this establishing a 
complete causal chain, mostly well understood. It 
might be argued by a materialist that there was no 
room for anything else, that everything was accounted 
for. So it is, except the most important thing of all, 
what the statue is for, what the sculptor meant by it. 
These physical and chemical investigations have not 
helped us in the least to understand the meaning of the 
statue. They have perhaps actually hindered us from 


THE PREVISION OF PROVIDENCE 161 


the perception of its significance by absorbing our time 
and attention and leading us all the time in the wrong 
direction; into the past, not into the future, where the 
meanings of things are to be found. The question 
‘What for?” should not be put to the past. “For” is 
part of “forward.” 

For man lives forward. He alone has the power of 
prevision. He plans for years; builds for centuries in 
advance; sacrifices himself for the benefit of genera- 
tions to come. He alone has visions of a distant future, 
of a Utopia upon earth, or of a city not made with 
hands, eternal in the heavens. 

Now man is not peculiar in working for the future, 
but he is peculiar in knowing that he is. The bee stor- 
ing up honey in the comb for the days when there shall 
be no more flowers, the bird making a nest for eggs 
yet to be laid, they are obviously working for the fu- 
ture, but it is not due to their own forethought. In the 
case of the instinct of insects and birds there is ap- 
parently also prevision, but it is not their own prevision. 
It seems that the world as a whole has this characteris- 
tic of prevision which is characteristic of the highest 
human intelligence. That is, in the world order man 
recognizes something working that is akin to his own 
mind but manifestly greater and more knowing and 
farther seeing, and to this he gives the name of God. 
Providence means literally “seeing ahead.” 

This gift of prevision, of foresight, which man in 
some degree possesses, has in all ages been recognized 
as the most divine of his faculties, for it is most like 
the teleological constitution of the cosmos. Because 
men have this gift they can set up for themselves goals 


162 LOOKING BACKWARD—LIVING FORWARD 


in advance of their times, higher ideals to be attained; 
and then strive for them consciously and consecutively. 
That is to say, the motive power of human actions may 
be set in the future instead of the past. We see a 
horse go faster as it is going homeward, and we say 
that is an intelligent horse; so it is. He is not being 
driven but led, and led by an unseen motive, oats 
ahead, not whip behind. That is a sign of intelligence, 
the sign of intelligence, in fact. You can judge of the 
intelligence of a man in the same way, by whether his 
motives are ahead or behind. It is more noble to be 
moved by a pull than by a push. 

The true object of education is the cultivation of this 
faculty of prevision. If you young people have been 
properly educated you have had your heads turned. A 
college is a “school of the prophets,” quite as much as 
that mentioned in the Bible. You young men shall see 
visions and you young women shall prophesy. And 
they will not be vain imaginings because you will know 
how to make them come true. You have learned from 
your study of science to have faith in the validity of 
nature, in the constancy of law. You have been taught 
in your historical studies what can be accomplished by 
human exertion and how it should be undertaken. His- 
tory is like a chauffeur’s mirror, set so as to show the 
road behind, but with the view of telling you what is 
coming. You should now be able to see the outcome 
from the beginning. You are expected to be able to 
tell a current from an eddy in the tide of the affairs of 
men. You should know how to tell a fad from a re- 
form. As a gardener knows the difference between 
weeds and flowers when the first cotyledons appear 


ANGELS UNAWARES 163 


above the soil, so you should know the difference be- 
tween profitable and detrimental social movements as 
they spring up. You should be able to distinguish be- 
tween a rising statesman and a false alarm. 

This evaluation of new ideas and persons is much 
more difficult than the revaluation of old things of 
which I spoke a while ago, and it is also much more im- 
portant. Princes are always in disguise, in the real 
world as in fairy books. We entertain angels only un- 
awares. Great causes appear among us incognito. The 
kingdom of God cometh not with observation but as a 
thief in the night. 


INVERTED HYPOCRISY 
Abstain from all appearance of evil—I Thessalonians 5:22. 


THERE is a vice, widely prevalent, very deleterious 
in its effects, yet rarely condemned by moralists; so 
rarely in fact that it has had no proper name given to 
it. Perhaps the nearest we have to a suitable designa- 
tion is that of “inverted hypocrisy,” first applied to 
Dean Swift by his friends when they discovered how 
much piety and benevolence he concealed under the 
cloak of skepticism and malice. 

Ordinary hypocrisy consists in pretending to be 
better than you really are. Inverted hypocrisy con- 
sists in pretending to be worse than you really are. 
The inverted form is more injurious both to the indi- 
vidual practicing it and to his associates than is the 
ordinary. If one assumes a virtue when he has it not, 
he raises the moral standard of the community and the 
ideal of human nature to the extent to which his pro- 
fession is credited by the people who know him. When 
one falsely confesses a wicked deed or a mean motive 
he is lowering the moral tone of society in so far as 
he is believed. The sin of the deception is the same 
in both cases, but since the evil in our own nature de- 
lights to recognize its counterpart in others, we are 
more apt to assume the truth of the ignoble profession 
than we are the claim to virtue. The reflex action upon 


the individual posing as saint or sinner is also very im- 
164 


ASSUMING VICES 165 


portant because one inevitably and unconsciously tends 
to become what he habitually pretends to be and is gen- 
erally regarded as being. 

The amount of lying that a man will do to prove 
that he has been a rogue is appalling. It is a vice com- 
mon to the prayer meeting and to the saloon. The con- 
vert who proclaims that he has “broken all the ten 
commandments time and again, year after year,” may, 
after all, be only breaking that against lying. In 
Shaw’s play of “Major Barbara,” the repentant sinner 
brought in much revenue to the Salvation Army by 
telling how he used to beat and kick his poor old 
mother, until the appearance on the scene of the indig- 
nant lady in a belligerent state of mind compelled him 
to retreat and retract, and freed him at one stroke from 
the burden of his fictitious sins. The practice of con- 
fession offers an insidious temptation to overindulgence 
even beyond the limits of truth. Like Topsy, it is hard 
to stop when we get started. It requires great moral 
restraint at times to avoid becoming an inverted hypo- 
crite. 

That one’s motives for adopting this perverted form 
of moral prevarication are often creditable does not, of 
course, excuse it or neutralize its evil consequences. 
Whether it is modesty, cynicism, an abnormal sense of 
one’s own unworthiness, a desire not to be peculiar, or 
the fear of being taken for a prig, the practice of wear- 
ing one’s clothes seamy side out and putting the worst 
foot forward has deplorable effects. A man who “never 
does a proper thing without giving an improper motive 
for it” is apt to be an undesirable citizen. We measure 
up by the height of our companions, and what lowers 


166 INVERTED HYPOCRISY 


them in our sight lowers us in reality. In a pine forest 
all trees grow tall. 

We should do unto ourselves what we would have 
others do unto us, that is, credit us with the highest mo- 
tive for our actions. Why we do things is often quite as 
inexplicable as it is why others do them, but if it is nec- 
essary to adopt an interpretation let us give our good 
angel the benefit of the doubt. When we are caught 
giving ten cents to a street beggar we begin to apolo- 
gize for the act, which, however unwise it may be, is 
certainly creditable in itself. We say, “I couldn’t help 
it; I am so constituted that I must give money to the 
poor,” thus throwing upon Fate or heredity the re- 
sponsibility for our virtues as we commonly do for our 
vices. Or we say, “I did it from a purely selfish mo- 
tive; I should have felt uncomfortable all day if I 
had not,” which is a fictitious assumption of inverted 
hypocrisy, because it is indirectly boasting the posses- 
sion of an ingrained benevolence of character and an 
active conscience. 

The employer who voluntarily cuts down the hours 
of work takes pains to state publicly the fact or the 
fiction that his hands will do more in eight hours than 
ten. If he provides lunch rooms and resting places for 
the girls he is careful to explain that it saves time and 
increases their efficiency. If he puts up model tene- 
ments he always professes to do it as a profitable in- 
vestment. This disguised philanthropy is so common 
that it has been given a special name, “three per cent 
charity.” 

Inverted hypocrisy is more common among men than 
among women. Women generally disguise their vices 


LIES OF ALUMNI 167 


rather than expose and exaggerate them. A boy will 
boast of the number of cigarettes he smokes, so many 
that his doctor has warned him that he will die in a 
year unless he stops, but no girl will admit taking cold 
from thin silk hose and pumps. Still women may often 
be observed to affect cowardice in order to stimulate 
masculine gallantry. And I have heard ladies who have 
given away some piece of valuable clothing tell their 
friends that they never did like to wear it; it was not 
becoming. 

In the minor forms of inverted hypocrisy which be- 
long to the realm of etiquette rather than ethics, there 
is apparently a tendency to improvement. An affecta- 
tion of inability to sing or speak in public, once almost 
a requirement of politeness, is now discountenanced. 
It is not regarded as consistent with true sportsmanship 
to underrate too greatly one’s own skill at golf or chess. 

This gives ground for some hope that the more ob- 
jectionable manifestations of the vice may likewise be 
eliminated by public opinion. The time may come when 
alumni returning to their alma mater will find other 
methods of ingratiating themselves with the undergrad- 
uates than by telling tales of their college pranks and 
misdeeds which, if true, would be ground for depriving 
them of their degrees; and when men, in order to prove 
themselves no better than other people, will not invent 
a “past” or steal sins from printed books like Kipling’s 
Tomlinson. 

Many a man has been discovered by accident or 
death to have been leading a double life; professedly 
idle and frivolous, really industrious and serious; or 
posing as a hard-hearted miser, really self-sacrificing 


168 INVERTED HYPOCRISY 


and charitable. In such a case it is a question whether 
his secret goodness has been sufficient to overcome the 
evil influence of his bad example. Beware of sheep in 
wolves’ clothing. 

If a man refuses a drink of whisky it is rarely ad- 
mitted to be from a preference for sobriety. He thinks 
it necessary to profess a dislike for the taste or he in- 
vents a fictitious physician to prohibit his indulgence. 
He prefers to “own” to a weak stomach than to a strong 
conscience. 

A decent man in level company will sometimes match 
the stories of amours with fictions of his own in order 
to escape the imputation of piety. “Abstain from all 
appearance of virtue” is the motto of many men. 

A soldier comes back from the war with medals. But 
he will not submit to any imputation of courageous- 
ness. According to his own story he went over the top 
from sheer cowardice, from fear of being laughed at. 
He enlisted in the first place, not from patriotism, but 
because he happened to be out of a job at the time 
and wanted a bit of adventure. 

Such modesty would not matter if people, especially 
young people, were not deceived by it and come to be- 
lieve that no one acts from moral motives. To deny 
good motives is to extend the scope of bad motives. 
To minimize virtue is to exaggerate evil. 

The man who pretends to know more than he does 
is a very disagreeable person to associate with, but he is 
not nearly so exasperating as the man who pretends to 
know less than he does. You may be able to learn 
something from the pretentious individual, but one who 
affects ignorance has you at a disadvantage, and is 


CULTIVATED IGNORANCE 169 


liable to lead you into making a fool of yourself through 
thinking he is one. 

This inverted hypocrisy of the intellect is one of the 
cultivated vices of the age. In some of its forms it is 
affected by women even more than men. There still 
exist women who think that men are fond of simple- 
tons and apt to choose them for wives. A young man 
showing a feminine friend about the city in the eve- 
ning stops for a moment before the open door of the 
power house of the trolley line and points out the big 
dynamos. She exclaims: “Electricity is all so mys- 
terious. I’ve tried and tried, but I never could under- 
stand how those things worked.” Her escort knows 
she is mistaken, and suspects she is lying, because a 
dynamo is much less complicated than a steam engine, 
over which she would have exhibited no astonishment 
or perplexity. If he is in a tolerant and good-natured 
mood he expresses a polite regret at her mental in- 
capacity and passes on. If he feels a bit malicious at 
being expected to swallow so silly a remark, he offers to 
explain its workings, and she, realizing that he has 
caught her, either refuses to listen, thereby confirming 
his suspicion, or, after listening, thanks him gravely, 
for thus telling her that which she knew before or did 
not wish to know at all. If she had told the truth in 
the first place that she had never studied the subject, 
or was not interested in it, or did not think it worth 
while, or was too lazy, she would have kept a larger 
part of his respect. 

Formerly travelers in foreign lands professed to know 
all about the history, art, and literature of the places 
they visited, and they complimented the reader by as- 


170 INVERTED HYPOCRISY 


cribing to him equal omniscience. Nowadays they write 
books to display their ignorance and to boast of their 
inattention. In the old-style book we would read: 
“Everybody knows the story of the reconciliation be- 
tween Emperor Fred. Barbarossa and Pope Alexander 
III effected here on 23d July, 1177, through the medi- 
ation of Doge Seb. Ziani, commemorated by these three 
red slabs.” In the modern volume of travel sketches 
we should find: “The guide pointed out some red stones 
in the porch and said something happened in there 
sometime, but I did not pay any attention to what he 
said, and it is too much trouble to look it up.” Ifa man 
has not enough energy even to copy from Baedeker, 
he ought never to travel, still less to write about it. No 
doubt the second writer knew as much about Pope and 
Emperor as the first, but he preferred to affect a shal- 
low pretense of ignorance, idleness, and indifference. 
So the volumes with mock-modest titles continually 
swarm out from the presses: “The Roundabout Ram- 
bles of an Absent-Minded Man,” “The Log of a Lazy 
Voyager” and “Sight-Seeing by a Blind Tourist.” Now 
if any man has information to give let him give it and 
with as little condescension as possible; but we have 
ignorance enough of our own without buying it at the 
rate of three dollars a volume. 

All branches of art are impeded in their progress by 
this hypocrisy of incapacity. The people are too docile. 
If they are told that they ought to admire certain 
paintings or poems or music, they dutifully do so. If 
they are told that certain others possess recondite vir- 
tues only to be appreciated by a few gifted and well 
trained minds, they accept that also and meekly admit 


SMOKE SCREENS 171 


their incapacity. A few years later, after the connois- 
seurs have tired of their pretense of esotericism, the 
work of art is taken from the sacred shrine and given 
freely to the people, who straightway discover that it is 
not hopelessly above their heads after all. It takes its 
place among the other idols of the market place and 
attracts a proper number of sincere worshipers. 

Who complains of the obscurity of Browning nowa- 
days? Anybody can read him without regarding it asa 
literary feat. This is not due to the labors of the 
Browning Society in supplying lexicons, keys, elucida- 
tions, and diagrams, nor does it prove that the school- 
boys and schoolgirls of today are smarter than their 
parents. It only means that the ban is off. Meredith’s 
novels become comprehensible just as soon as one by 
one the copyright drops off and they come out in cheap 
edition. Ibsen’s plays, once the monopoly of the elect 
(self-elected), now are found too simple to brag about. 
A quotation from the Rubaiyat no longer serves as a 
password of the Society of the Illuminati. It is too 
common to use even as the title of a short story in a 
Sunday supplement. The superstition of incompre- 
hensibility still shadows Henry James, but it will not 
last much longer. Before long we shall discover that 
the few who profess to be able to understand all he has 
written and the many who profess not to be able to 
understand anything he has written are equally false in 
their pretensions. 

On summer afternoons the band in the park plays 
Wagner between Verdi and Sousa. The crowd frankly 
enjoys it and applauds. Nobody stops his ears to shut 
out the horrid cacophony that shocked our parents. 


172 INVERTED HYPOCRISY 


Nobody puts on a mystified and baffled expression. 
What we call the elevation of popular taste consists 
principally in inducing the people to reveal their taste 
instead of masking it under the affectation of incapac- 
ity. 

Inverted hypocrisy, whether of mind or morals, un- 
deniably exerts a bad influence on the whole. On the 
other hand there is much to be said of its converse, the 
normal kind of hypocrisy, even though it is classed 
among the vices instead of the virtues. 

How far a man can keep himself in physical health 
by assuming that he is well is a disputed question. 
Christian Scientists have gone to extremes—but we all 
say that “there is something in it.” At least we ac- 
knowledge that a man seriously impairs his health by 
thinking himself diseased. 

We know that in the moral sphere this method will 
go further than in the physiological. ‘‘Assume a virtue 
if you have it not” is sometimes good advice. To pro- 
fess moral health is unquestionably more wholesome 
than to assume moral disease. A man who sets up a 
false reputation for himself may by that means acquire 
a real character. The pretense may become an actual- 
ity, the fiction become a fact. 

“What I aspired to be and was not, comforts me,” 
says Rabbi Ben Ezra. 

An ingenious French writer, Jules de Gaultier, has 
built up a philosophy of ethics based upon the assump- 
tion that hypocrisy is not a vice but a virtue, in fact 
the chief of virtues since it is only by means of it that 
moral advance has been made. According to this 
theory, which he called ‘Bovarysme’—from Flau- 


MAKING MYTHS COME TRUE 173 


bert’s Madame Bovary—man sets himself up as a 
model of what he would like to be and does in that way 
come nearer to his ideal than he was or than he other- 
wise would be. A nation believing itself, however er- 
roneously, the most courageous or enterprising people 
in the world may in course of time actually become 
such. 

It is, says Gaultier, by means of the power of af- 
firmation, of assuming an ideal and so converting it 
into reality, that man has made all his ethical progress. 
The “Moral Myth” of Gaultier corresponds to the “‘So- 
cial Myth” of Sorel, who has made it the mechanism of 
social progress. 

But can that be called a myth which is but the first 
step to reality? When an architect wants to build a 
house he draws a picture of it, green trees, pretty flow- 
ers, children playing politely. That is a myth, a piece 
of hypocrisy. No such house exists on the lot—but 
were it not for the picture the house would never be 
built. 

James’s “Will to Believe” applies not to “impossi- 
bilities” but to unrealities, which may be made actuali- 
ties if we desire them strongly enough and have faith 
in their possibility. It is only by reaching out his oars 
in advance of the boat that the rower can make prog- 
ress. Vaihinger in his Philosophy of “As If” (Als Ob) 
makes this the basis of a complete and elaborate theory 
of social progress. 

We must admit that it is wrong to be a hypocrite for 
the purpose of deceiving other people. But is it wrong 
to be a hypocrite for the purpose of deceiving oneself? 
Is it altogether a disadvantage to see yourself, not as 


174 INVERTED HYPOCRISY 


you are, but as you would like to have others see you? 
When you are learning to swim or skate, your instructor 
keeps telling you that “you can do it,” that “you are 
doing splendidly.” He is lying, if you like, but if he 
can make you believe his lie it will cease to be a lie and 
become a truth. 

We must beware of carrying over in to the realm of 
psychology the laws of inanimate nature. Wishing and 
hoping and believing that the weather will be better to- 
morrow will make no difference with it, but wishing 
and hoping and believing that you will be better—or 
worse—tomorrow may make a difference. 

At any rate if you are going to do any pretending, be 
sure you pretend on the right side. It was not alto- 
gether a gain when Christians ceased to call themselves 
“saints.” Some of them really became what they all 
professed to be. 


TELLING THE TRUTH 


These are the things that ye shall do. Speak ye every man the 
truth to his neighbour; execute the judgment of truth and peace in 
your gates: and let none of you imagine evil in your hearts against 
his neighbour; and love no false oath; for all these are things that 
I hate, saith the Lord—Zachariah 8: 16-17. 


THESE phrases sound like platitudes to us. It seems 
so obvious and necessary that God should be a lover 
of truth and a hater of lies, and that he should wish us 
to be like him in this respect. But when we study 
comparative religions we find that our God is not as 
other gods; that truthfulness is not regarded by most 
nations as an attribute of deity. The gods of our an- 
cestors, Woden and Thor and Loki, were not truth- 
tellers. The gods of the Greeks and Romans, Jupiter, 
Juno, and Minerva, were exceedingly skillful in lying 
through constant practice. Indeed, there was selected 
a special god of lying, and any man, who wanted divine 
assistance and guidance in some important lie he was 
about to tell, could to this end offer his prayers to Mer- 
cury. Among the multifarious gods of the Hindu there 
is not one god of truth, but all of them set examples of 
deceit and of trickery which the most devout of their 
worshipers would find difficult to imitate. Greek his- 
torians tell, as one of the most remarkable facts about 
that new and conquering race which had come out of 
the mountains and overspread the plains of Mesopo- 
tamia, the Persians, that they taught their boys three 


things: to ride, to shoot, and to speak the truth. 
175 


176 TELLING THE TRUTH 


The world, outside of Christendom, has made no ap- 
parent moral progress in this regard for the last two 
thousand years; and among three-fourths of the inhabi- 
tants of the earth today a lie is not regarded as a sin, 
or, at least, is considered a very venial one. In India 
a man who does not lie when it is to his advantage to 
do so, is looked upon as a fool. ‘“Truthfulness is the 
youngest of the virtues.” * 

But among Christian nations there certainly has 
been improvement in the matter of truthfulness, and it 
is safe to say that our own race and civilization have 
come nearer the ideal than any other the world has 
ever known. There is here definite, measurable prog- 
ress, which we can discern more plainly than in most 
branches of applied ethics. For example, this is a 
commercial age; and, in commerce, lying used to be 
thought indispensable. In fact, even now, In most 
countries, small bargaining is not carried on at all with- 
out a process of “beating down,” involving many lies 
on both sides. But in this country, at the present time, 
by far the larger proportion of business transactions is 
conducted without misrepresentation. It is beginning 
to be realized that “honesty zs the best policy.” Look 
over the pages of advertising which make up the bulk 
of our magazines and you will find they consist, for the 
most part, of attractive and cleverly depicted descrip- 
tions of the articles for sale. Except for such rhetorical 
flourishes as that the goods in question are ‘‘the best 
in the world,” “the cheapest on the market,” and ‘“‘in- 
dispensable to every household,” which, however far 
from the truth, are not intended to be accepted literally, 

1 Nietzsche. 


TRUTHFUL ADVERTISING 177 


' and must not be considered too seriously, you will find 
they contain very few false statements. One can buy 
from magazine advertisements or mail-order catalogues 
with the same confidence as though he had the article 
in hand. Patent medicines and health foods are about 
the only commodities that keep to the old form of ex- 
aggeration and concealment. This remarkable advance 
in the ethics of advertising is worthy of our attention 
because there has been perceptible improvement in the 
matter within the memory of any one of us. We have 
reason for great encouragement that such a considera- 
ble degree of truthfulness and frankness has been at- 
tained in a field like commerce once supposed to be 
necessarily dependent for its success on lying and de- 

ception. 
_ We have reason to hope that in time the news and 
editorial columns of a newspaper will be as truthful as 
its advertisements, and that finally household and so- 
cial lying may be eliminated. Even politics is not hope- 
less. I may be too optimistic on this point, but I am 
quite positive, in my own mind, that there is less falsi- 
fying and misrepresentation of opponents, arguments, 
and position in political speeches nowadays than there 
used to be. I believe that any one who will compare 
the campaign literature of the time of Washington and 
Jefferson with that of the last presidential campaign, 
will come to the same conclusion, however little that 
may say for the truthfulness of either. But this is 
merely an attempt to see light through the thickest of 
the clouds of falsehood that envelop us. 

It is, at any rate, a great triumph to have a prevalent 
opinion that truthfulness is a virtue, and to have lying 


178 TELLING THE TRUTH 


under an ostensible condemnation. The most degraded 
among us feel this, and the belief in Lis own truthful- 
ness is the last shred of self-respect that a man gives 
up. Approach some man who you think has resigned 
all pretention to morality, and try it. Tell him that he 
is a habitual drunkard, and he will grin; accuse him 
of the grossest licentiousness, and he will blush—with 
pride; but call him a liar, and you will have to dodge. 

What we need, then, is not a higher ideal, nor a 
sharper realization of the wickedness of lying, but a 
more sensitive conscience to detect our deviations from 
the truth. Most of our lying is done unconsciously, 
which, of course, does not make our case one bit better, 
but accounts for our obliviousness. 

I will not discuss the question as to whether a lie is 
ever justifiable. It is generally admitted by authori- 
ties on ethics that there are occasions when a lie is per- 
missible. Probably none of us would hesitate to mis- 
lead a crazed man with a gun chasing a child to shoot 
it, when asked as to the street down which it had gone. 
Such cases are so rare as to be of no practical impor- 
tance in comparison with the number of unnecessary 
lies we tell. Neither shall I attempt to decide whether 
we can get along in this world and tell the truth all the 
time. I believe there have been entire days in my life 
in which I have not told a lie, and I presume all of you 
can say as much or more. I do not suppose that any 
of us would venture to declare that he had spent a week 
without committing this sin, unless perchance he were 
living in solitude. We often hear amusing stories 
of several persons agreeing to tell the truth for 
some stated period, and of the disastrous consequences 


THE ART OF TRUTH-TELLING 179 


that follow. Very likely the stories are not true, but 
conventional lies are so interwoven with our civilization 
that such an ideal as absolute truth, frankly expressed, 
seems hopelessly unattainable. No one of us can re- 
form the world. Nobody can reform anybody else, 
anyway. The only thing we can do, practically, is for 
each one of us to resolve to be a little more truthful 
than our neighbor, even if we suffer for it, and to de- 
vote more thought to the problem of how to tell the 
truth. Like every other virtue, truth-telling does not 
result from merely willing to do it. Nobody can be 
good, or what is more important, do good, by simple ef- 
fort of the will; no more than he can become an ath- 
lete or an engineer by wishing to be one. There is a 
constant tendency in the church to exaggerate the im- 
portance of good intentions, and to ignore results. 

It is, doubtless, worse to make a false statement 
knowing it to be false; but practically there is no dif- 
ference, except to the individual. So far as the world 
is concerned, an untruth is as disastrous as a deliberate 
lie. It makes a difference to yourself, to the relations 
between yourself and your God, whether you are sin- 
cerely mistaken or intentionally deceitful, but to con- 
sider that point as the most important is to be purely 
selfish. 

I ask a man when train Number Two leaves, and he 
says “At four o’clock.” When I miss my train I hunt 
him up and ask him what he meant. He replies calmly: 
“Oh, I was just mistaken, that’s all. I didn’t tell a 
lie. The recording angel did not put down a sin against 
me that time.”’ Then I know that he is not only care- 
less but selfish. The true Christian thinks more about 


180 TELLING THE TRUTH 


other people than himself, and more about conse- 
quences than intentions. That is why the true Chris- 
tian is truthful. 

I must repeatedly call your attention to the text, 
which is positive, not negative. It is not ‘Thou shalt 
not lie,” but it is “Speak the truth,” which is an en- 
tirely different thing. We find it much easier to obey 
a prohibition than a command, and so we try to turn 
God’s laws into that form. We find it easier not to hate 
than to love; easier to rest on the seventh day than to 
work on the six days; easier not to lie than to tell the 
truth. But the negative of a vice is not much of a 
virtue. 

To tell the truth, it is first of all necessary to have a 
truth to tell. Truth-telling is conveying a fact from 
one mind to another. Of course, like everything else 
in this world, it cannot be perfectly done except in the 
simplest cases. We can never know the absolute truth 
if it is at all complex. Language is so inadequate that 
we can never perfectly convey to another even what we 
thoroughly comprehend ourselves. But these theoreti- 
cal limits need not concern us, since we do not usually 
come near them. ‘The more we learn of truth of all 
kinds, the more easily we can speak it. All education 
is merely training in truth-telling. That is what our 
schools are for. That is the sole purpose of a uni- 
versity. If asgraduate after four years of hard work 
can distinguish more clearly between truth and error, 
the work has been worth while. If he cannot, his uni- 
versity course is a failure, no matter how many de- 
grees he has. 

Every scrap of truth is so valuable that we cannot 


A SIN AGAINST THE HOLY GHOST 181 


be too diligent in collecting and preserving it. Hun- 
dreds of thousands of dollars are spent in sending as- 
tronomers to distant points to watch an eclipse that 
they may be able to tell the truth a little more nearly 
about the sun. A cloudy day may make the expedition 
a failure. Numerous expeditions have been sent to the 
Arctic and Antarctic regions to find out the truth about 
the Poles. Many men have sacrificed their lives to find 
out which species of mosquito carries fever germs. The 
information on this point in entomology has already 
saved thousands of lives and will continue to save lives 
through the years to come. What men are willing to 
give their lives to discover we ought to be willing to 
devote a little time to learning. “Wisdom is the princi- 
pal thing; therefore get wisdom.” Habitual ignorance 
is a vice. Intentional and premeditated ignorance is a 
crime. It is the unpardonable sin, because it is a sin 
against the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of Truth. 

We cannot know everything, any more than we can 
do everything. If a botanist spends his whole life 
studying one plant, he will be able to come nearer tell- 
ing the truth about it than you or I, but even on this 
one subject he cannot comply with that glib request 
we make of our witnesses, to “tell the truth, the whole 
truth, and nothing but the truth.” No man can do 
that. We have no reason to be ashamed that we are 
ignorant, but we should be ashamed that we are ig- 
norant of so many things that we could know if it 
were not that our natural laziness and inborn love of 
lies prevent us from knowing. 

It is, of course, not desirable that we should all know 
the same things. Nor is it necessary to decide abso- 


182 TELLING THE TRUTH 


lutely the vexed question as to what knowledge is of 
the most worth. Obviously that depends upon circum- 
stances. If a man is going to another city, it is more 
important for him to know the time tables and the con- 
junction of the trains than to know about Mars and the 
conjunction of the planets. It is desirable to know 
Greek to be able to read the words of Paul and Plato 
in the original, but if a man were going to live in China 
it would be worth more to know Chinese. But all truth 
comes from One who is the only source of truth, and it 
is all equally sacred. 

We should avoid all contempt of those who are pur- 
suing truth in a different form or by different methods 
from our own, and concern ourselves solely with ac- 
quiring what truth we can in our own way. 

Our first and principal duty in this world is to seek 
truth. Never be content with a fiction when you can 
get a fact. Do not accept anything on poor authority 
when you can get better. Be as scrupulous as a judge 
about hearsay evidence. You should use secondhand 
information as reluctantly as secondhand clothes. Be 
constantly and perpetually critical of everything you 
hear and read. ‘Prove all things; hold fast that which 
is good.” Remember that the “Father of Lies” is al- 
ways devising stratagems to deceive you; that he is ly- 
ing in wait in the most innocent-looking ambuscades; 
that he may make an ally of your best friend 
and most trusted authority, and deceive the very elect. 
Never let your desire for information get ahead of 
your powers of discrimination. Don’t swallow faster 
than you can digest. It is safer to be skeptical than 
credulous, to miss truth than to believe a lie, In the 


AS EASY AS LYING 183 


words of one of our humorist-philosophers, “It is bet- 
ter not to know so much than to know so many things 
that are not so,” words which might well be carved 
over the door of every university and public library in 
the land. To believe a falsehood is to deny God. It 
makes you a slave of Satan instead of a servant of the 
Lord. The devil is a liar and the father of lies. 

Our most insidious temptations come from our ten- 
dency to believe what we want to believe, to see what 
we want to see, and to shut our eyes to everything un- 
pleasant and disturbing to our preconceptions and de- 
sires. It is exceedingly difficult to accept an unwel- 
come fact at its par value, or to reject a confirmation 
of our pet theory because it lacks foundation. It 
requires the keenest of eyesight to follow truth 
through the maze oferror. To realize just how much a 
fact proves; to perceive exactly where are the limits of 
our knowledge; to know what we do not know—these 
are what tax our ability to the utmost and cause us 
most frequently to fail. If two people in an argument 
would both tell the truth, would admit the full force of 
an opposing argument, and care nothing about winning 
a point, they would find themselves not so far apart as 
they supposed. But, as Huxley says, “An argument al- 
ways tends to slip from the question of what is right to 
who is right.” 

There are two sides to truth-telling. As it takes two 
to make a quarrel, so it takes two to tell the truth: one 
to speak, and one to listen. It is a social act. Robin- 
son Crusoe could not tell the truth—nor a lie—until 
he had a companion on the island. Now it is difficult 


184 TELLING THE TRUTH 


to tell the truth, but it is still more difficult to listen to 
it. It would be easier for me to tell you what I think 
of you than to listen while you told me what you think 
of me. 

One of the principal reasons why there is so little 
truth told in the world is that most of us do not want 
the truth told. The more nearly a man comes to telling 
the truth, the more he is disliked and avoided. Any- 
body who told the naked truth on all occasions would 
have to take to the hills. People would not endure it. 
I am not advocating any violent reform in this matter. 
It would be a useless waste of breath. I would only go 
as far as you are all willing to go with me in a plea for 
a little more toleration of truth-telling. Do not be one 
of those persons of whom we say that they have to be 
lied to. Remember that your neighbor is, like yourself, 
under the injunction to speak the truth, and if you by 
your attitude are preventing him from speaking the 
truth you are responsible for his sin of omission or — 
commission. Don’t compel him to sacrifice either your 
friendship or his candor. If we would, each one of us, 
resolve to hear the truth with patience and without of- 
fense the greatest obstacle to truth-telling would be 
removed. : 

If a lie is told or the truth is withheld, it is more 
often the hearer’s fault. For it is easier to tell the 
truth, in so far as one knows it, than to invent a plausi- 
ble falsehood, and men would not take the more diffi- 
cult course unless they were forced to it. We need an- 
other petition in our prayer “Lead us not into tempta- 
tion.” We should add, “Let us not lead others into 
temptation.” To be practical and specific, when you 


SUFFER TRUTH GLADLY 185 


go shopping do not try to inveigle the clerk into saying 
that the article is worth two dollars, but that he will 
cut it down to ninety-nine cents for you on account of 
your good looks. It might not be true, and you would 
become particeps criminis to the lie. Ask the political 
speaker why he exaggerates the merits of his cause and 
candidate and he will tell you it is because his auditors 
demand such talk. Should he give a fair and unbiased 
statement of the case as he saw it he would do more 
harm than good to his cause and party, “damning them 
with faint praise.” Thus the audience is more to blame 
than the speaker. 

It is unfair to lay the blame for ‘“‘yellow” journalism 
on the editor alone. The five hundred thousand sub- 
scribers are more to blame. When you buy a paper 
take pains to select the most truthful one you can find, 
the most sober, sane, unbiased, and reliable. Whenever 
you do this you are working for the Lord and not the 
Devil. 

A minister said to me not long since that it was im- 
possible for him to preach the truth to his congregation 
on many theological questions. He could not tell them 
that the world moved in theology as in everything else, 
because they who had not studied such questions held a 
different opinion from him who had spent many years 
in such study. That does not imply that he told lies to 
his people, or that he hypocritically concealed his real 
Opinions in order to hold his position. He simply felt 
obliged to leave them in ignorance of much that had 
been discovered in recent years about the Bible and the 
nature of its revelation because they would not bear 
the truth. They preferred to walk in darkness rather 


186 TELLING THE TRUTH 


than in the light. Permit your minister to tell the 
truth. | 

You can also give encouragement to truth-tell- 
ing by being less sensitive in social matters. You need 
not take offense when an acquaintance does not receive 
your call for reasons known only to herself, without re- 
quiring her to have you told that she is out, or to con- 
ceal herself behind the curtains and pretend the electric 
bell did not work. It is not enough to tell the truth 
yourself; you should give others a fair chance to tell 
the truth also. 

Each profession has its own peculiar temptations, its 
own code of ethics. The preacher, who, above all others, 
should be privileged to speak the truth, is hampered by 
antique creeds and the fear of offending his people and 
so losing his power of doing them good. The teacher is 
tempted to conceal the weak points in his theory and 
not to present the facts in their crude, natural form, 
but to fix them up so as to seem simpler than they are 
and easier to grasp. The lawyer is tempted to exag- 
gerate his case and use unfair arguments to win his 
cause. The doctor is often known to conceal the truth, 
sometimes because he fears the effect on the patient, 
but more often because friends and relatives will not 
endure the truth and will get a more encouraging physi- 
cian. Orators soon learn that it is their most exag- 
gerated and untrue statements that win applause, and 
that when they keep to plain, unadorned facts the audi- 
ence goes to sleep. Children are trained to lie by some 
parents, who either punish or scold severely for small 
offenses, manifesting such holy horror over petty sins 
that their children fear to confess them. Our conven- 


VEILING THE TRUTH 187 


tionalities require constant repression of the child’s nat- 
ural frankness, and this easily leads to concealment 
and deception. 

Women seem to be more deficient in the matter of 
truth-telling than men, perhaps because their deviations 
from the truth are more lightly regarded than in the 
case of men. We have a different standard for the two 
sexes in almost all forms of morals as in this. For ex- 
ample, it is commonly regarded as worse for a woman 
to swear or get drunk than for a man. On the other 
hand, society looks with much more leniency on a 
woman who tells lies than on a man of like failing. It 
is the duty of each one of us to work in his own way 
for the establishment of truth upon earth. All truth, 
however trivial it may appear, is only a reflection of 
God who is the truth, just as every pool and every bril- 
liant pebble reflects the image of the sun. As we grow 
in wisdom we approach nearer to God the Omniscient. 
Every fact that we acquire, every error we shun, makes 
us more like him who is our example. That is the 
whole duty of man, to know God, and we are learning 
to know God as we know more and more of his doings 
in the world, of his eternal and unchangeable laws 
which we call the laws of nature. Not man alone, but 
every animal, plant, and stone is made in the image of 
God, and we know of him by studying them. But the 
brightness of pure truth, of the very face of God, is 
too dazzling for our weak eyes. We ask that it be 
veiled for us. And so man weaves a tissue of false- 
hood, of mystery, of poetry, to hide the brightness of 
the Truth, making this world still darker by the shadow 
of his lies. There is nothing mystic about things di- 


188 TELLING THE TRUTH 


vine; there is merely our own ignorance. It is he who, 
even now as when on earth, opens the eyes of the blind, 
even those who have blinded themselves and who walk 
in darkness because their deeds are evil. He has prom- 
ised us that his spirit, the Spirit of Truth, shall come 
and guide us into all truth. 


THE DUTY OF INTELLIGENCE 


Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with 
all thy getting get understanding.—Proverbs 4:7. 


I PRESUME Christians pay less attention to this than 
to any other injunction in the Bible. As a class they 
seem to be no more eager than other people to get wis- 
dom, and you know there is nothing more unpopular 
than learning. In general people acquire as little 
knowledge as they can, and while a man will cross the 
street to avoid a creditor you often find one going 
around a block to dodge a fact that is coming toward 
him. Yet it is undoubtedly true that wisdom is the 
principal thing we need to make the world go better. 
Most people most of the time are doing as well as they 
know. There are more blunders than crimes, and the 
one is just as bad as the other in its consequences. It 
is ignorance, not malice, that makes the most trouble 
in government, in society, in the church. We pray 
often for the removal of our sins, but not so frequently 
for the removal of our ignorance. We seem to think 
that if the heart is right all our actions will be right, 
forgetting that it is the brain that directs the hands 
and tongue. Now, that we should have good inten- 
tions is a very important thing to us, but not so im- 
portant to other people. A person’s good intentions are 
nothing to us, it is his actions alone that affect us. 


What matters is not what he meant to do but what he 
189 


190 THE DUTY OF INTELLIGENCE 


did. The world is not concerned with motives, but with 
motions. 

So it is no excuse at all for a bad act to say you 
meant it right. It clears you of blame but it doesn’t re- 
move the consequences of your blunder. Your acts 
are intended to affect others and you are responsible 
for the results. It is pure selfishness to view your work 
from the standpoint of your own justifications. You 
ought to care more about others than yourself and con- 
sider the consequences of your actions rather than the 
motives. 

Since so much stress is laid on the importance of 
good intentions, Christians sometimes get the idea that 
it is of no importance how their intentions are carried 
out. That is why some of them do so little good in the 
world. They are converted, but it doesn’t do anybody 
else any good. They are headed in the right direction, 
but they don’t go. They have been born again, but 
they remain babies. They have a new heart, but it 
does not beat. 

So it happens that in the practice of Christianity 
there is a great deal more of zeal than knowledge. Now 
knowledge without zeal is like a ship without an en- 
gine; it is useless. Zeal without knowledge is like a 
ship without a rudder; it is dangerous. As to which is 
the worse, God knows. Both bring calamity. Which 
was it that led to the downfall of the Jewish nation? 
This is what the Lord said through the mouth of the 
prophet: “‘My people are destroyed for lack of knowl- 
edge. Because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also 
reject thee.” * 

1 Hosea 4:6. 


ZEAL WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE 19] 


The Jew never lacked zeal. Paul persecuted the 
Christians with the greatest zeal. The Pharisees and 
those that cried “Crucify him” were remarkable for 
their earnestness and devotion to religion. Torque- 
mada and Philip II of Spain were sincere and well- 
meaning. The Bolshevists of Russia and the Moham- 
medans of Asia, who have within the last few years 
killed more people for their belief than ever perished 
under the Roman emperors, are zealous men. No, 
there is no lack of zeal and energy in the world, and 
good intentions are not rare, ‘‘but where shall wisdom 
be found? and where is the place of understanding? 
. . . It cannot be gotten for gold, neither shall silver 
be weighed out for the price thereof. ... For the 
price of wisdom is above rubies.” 

How then can we get wisdom? From the All Wise 
alone. ‘For the Lord giveth wisdom,” and we are told, 
“Tf any of you lack wisdom let him ask of God, ... 
and it shall be given him.” That, however, does not 
mean that we have nothing to do but pray for it. We 
pray for our daily bread, but we have to work for it 
just the same. It means that from God only can we 
get wisdom. 

God is the personification of wisdom as well as the 
embodiment of love. That is the literal meaning of the 
term Logos used by John and translated “Word.” It 
includes all the ‘“‘ologies.’’ All truth comes from God. 
That is difficult to realize because we come upon truth 
in strange places and in strange guises in this world, 
and we often fail to recognize it because it sometimes 
appears in such unexpected quarters, and in such dis- 
reputable forms. But just as all daylight comes from 


192 THE DUTY OF INTELLIGENCE 


the sun, whether it is distorted and colored by coming 
through glass, or dimly reflected from the surface of a 
muddy pool, so everything that is true has a divine 
origin. It is important to keep this in mind because 
there is a tendency to think that only religious truth 
comes from God. Men have always been trying to 
limit God, and the latest scheme is to try to confine 
him between the lids of the Bible. Everything in the 
Bible came from God, they say; but everything out- 
side, however true it may be, has another source. What 
other source is not stated; certainly not the “Father of 
Lies.” 

There is in the Bible a revelation of God, but only a 
partial one; it is supplementary to what we can find out 
about him from studying the world, which, it is taken 
for granted, we are all studying. All nature is a revela- 
tion of God just as much as is the Bible, and a knowl- 
edge of it is necessary to a complete comprehension of 
God. Moral laws are not the whole of God’s code. All 
physical laws are included as well. Any one who dis- 
covers a fact, however insignificant, receives it as a 
gift from the Father of Truth. Science is simply an 
imperfect attempt to study God as he has revealed him- 
self in nature. The textbook I use in organic chemis- 
try has for its motto the inspiring words of one of the 
greatest masters of science: ‘“Thinking again the 
thoughts of God.” 

If we believe that God is the source of all wisdom, 
we must reach the conclusion that no two truths can 
contradict each other. That would seem axiomatic, but 
a great many people do not believe it. They stow away, 
in separate compartments of their brains, contradic- 


THE WIDER SCRIPTURES 193 


tory statements without any attempt to reconcile them 
or to decide which are right. They think that a thing 
may be false at one time and true at another; that a 
thing may be true in science but false in religion—and 
vice versa. The idea is blasphemous. If we believe in 
the unity of God we must believe in the unity of truth. 

Our duty is to search for truth wherever it is to be 
found, work for it, gather it up, a grain at a time, as 
men gather grains of gold from the sands of our moun- 
tain streams. We are to search the Scriptures, but also 
to search every other possible source for light upon the 
great problems of life. I do not wish to be understood 
as underestimating the value of studying the Bible, but 
I wish to emphasize the necessity of studying other 
things, too. The Bible is not all there is of religion. 
Enoch, Abraham, and Moses did not have the Scrip- 
tures, and they were good men. The early Christians, 
who were probably as good as we later ones, had only 
the Old Testament and such echoes of the Master’s 
teachings as still lingered in the minds of the disciples. 
Not for two hundred years, during which Christianity 
made its great triumphs, was the Bible put into its pres- 
ent shape. 

It is customary at the present day to base 
moral lessons from the pulpit upon Bible texts alone. 
In this, however, we are not following the example of 
the Bible preachers. They took their texts from books 
or from nature, from both God’s revelations—his Word 
and his Works. From the question put to Job? out of 
the cyclone you will see he is charged with neglect of 
getting that realization of God’s majesty, power, and 

2 Job 38. 


194 THE DUTY OF INTELLIGENCE 


love that can only be acquired by the study of natural 
history. God reproaches Job for not having studied the 
seasons, the weather, the birds, the leviathan, and the 
behemoth. Had he done so, he would not have talked 
so foolishly. If he had known more about natural his- 
tory he would not have made such blunders in theology. 
If he had known more about meteorology and zodlogy 
he would have known more about God. 

Solomon recommends the same source of wisdom: 
“Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and 
be wise.” “The conies are but a feeble folk, yet make 
they their houses in the rocks.” 

What texts did Christ preach from? Sometimes he 
entered into a synagogue, and after the reading of the 
Scripture took a text from that. But he did not take a 
text from the sacred writings as often as he did from 
nature; and he did not preach as often in churches as 
he did in the woods and among the hills. He took 
walks through the fields with his disciples on the Sab- 
bath—which shocked the devout people of that day 
much as it would at the present time—and talked about 
the wheat, the weeds, the flowers, the birds, and the 
stones. What would you think if, when you assembled 
to hear your pastor, he should lead you out from the 
church, away from pulpit and pews, from organ and 
Bibles and hymn books, out up the road to the hills, 
and as you walked he should talk to you of the things 
you saw, and in a casual sort of way, and draw moral 
lessons from the flowers, the brush, the bird’s nest, and 
the fossils in the rocks? That is the kind of preacher 
Jesus was. Doubtless such a minister would strike 
you as very queer, if not crazy. Just so did Jesus seem 


THE CONTAGION OF SIN 195 


to the church of his time. Very likely a vigorous pro- 
test would be made against such an eccentric person— 
just as the Jews protested. What Jesus disliked espe- 
cially was conventionality and formalism; but curiously 
enough that seems to be what the Christian church is 
particularly attached to and regards as indispensable. 
It mistakes form for substance, the clothes for the man, 
The church was founded in the spirit of Christ as a 
revolt against formalism and conventionality, but I 
fear there are many belonging to the so-called ‘‘evan- 
gelical” branches of the church in these days who are 
as much attached to their simple ceremonies as are the 
members of other divisions to their more elaborate 
forms of worship. 

One reason why it is so important to know all of 
God’s laws is that the same rule holds good here as in 
our own courts. Ignorance of the law excuses no one. 
If a man steps from off the top of a building, ignorance 
of the law of gravitation does not save him from capital 
punishment. Ignorance of the laws of physiology and 
hygiene does not exempt one from disease. It is only 
by acquainting ourselves as far as possible with the 
laws according to which God rules the world that we 
are able to take advantage of them and escape punish- 
ment for their violation. 

It is the same with God’s moral laws as with his 
physical or physiological laws. “The soul that sinneth, 
it shall die,” is the law, and the only way to escape the 
penalty is by finding out what are sins and avoiding 
them. Vice and smallpox are both contagious, and even 
if you do not know this to be true you will not be able 
to escape injury if you suffer yourself to become in- 


196 THE DUTY OF INTELLIGENCE 


fected. If you fall into a moral abyss the plea that 
you did not mean to fall, or that you did not know the 
danger, will not save you from a damaged soul any 
more than the same excuse will save you from broken 
bones when you fall into a chasm. Good intention is 
not enough; good intention plus wisdom is all that will 
avail. Either alone is practically useless. For real 
service two things are necessary, a willingness to serve 
and a knowledge of how to do it. If you wish to save 
a drowning man you must not only be brave and self- 
sacrificing, but know how to swim or to throw a rope. 
That is why Peter says, “Add to your virtue knowl- 
edge,” and again he enjoins the disciples to “grow in 
grace and knowledge,” because if one gets ahead of the 
other there is trouble. Paul reprovingly says in 
Romans: “For I bear them record that they have a zeal 
of God, but not according to knowledge.” 

Most of our modern preachers do not lay an equal 
emphasis on these two agents of human progress, yet 
such advice would seem to be as much needed now as in 
the days of Solomon or Paul. It is still common to 
see zeal run away with discretion: 


There’s nothing that’s equal, ’mong torture’s inventions 
To a good-natured fool with the best of intentions. 


There is a fable of an elephant who came across a 
nest of ostrich eggs lying in the sand of the desert—as 
Job describes in the passage referred to. The ele- 
phant’s heart was touched with pity at the sight, and 
she said to herself: “How sad to see these offspring 
neglected by the unnatural mother. Or perhaps she 


THE DEVOUT ASTRONOMER 197 


has gone in search of food and has met with an acci- 
dent. But I, too,ama mother. I will hatch these or- 
phaned eggs.” With that she sat upon the nest. We 
must have something more than a desire to do good, we 
must know how to do it. 

Many a brilliant and devout man has failed in the 
ministry because he knew but half his business. He 
knew his Bible, but not his congregation. He had 
studied theology but not psychology. He had his mes- 
sage, but could not deliver it because he did not know 
how to address it. A workman must know his ma- 
terial as well as his tools. 

All knowledge is useful to the Christian worker. The 
distinction made between sacred and secular is purely 
an arbitrary one for practical convenience. The Chris- 
tian teacher can afford to neglect neither field. It is 
only in the study of nature that he can get any ade- 
quate conception of the greatness of God, his omnip- 
otence and providence. “The undevout astronomer 
is mad,” but all branches of science, properly studied, 
lead to reverence. No scientist ever makes the mis- 
take so common among unscientific people of doubting 
the universality and immutability of God’s laws. Only 
those who study natural history realize how God pro- 
tects and provides for the meanest of living creatures, 
beings so small that we can hardly see them with our 
most powerful miscroscopes, but not too small to re- 
ceive the same care and attention from their creator 
that we do. They seek their food from God even as do 
the lions. Every living creature has its pleasures and 
its duties, its place in the universal system. It takes 
the conceit out of a man to study biology. There is no 


198 THE DUTY OF INTELLIGENCE 


reason to think that in God’s biological system a man 
is better cared for than a microbe. 

Of quite as much importance as the study of science 
is the study of history. Thus alone can we learn how 
God deals with men in masses. We find that a nation, 
like an individual, prospers in so far as it keeps God’s 
laws; that ‘“‘righteousness exalteth a nation,” that all 
the great empires that have prevailed on the earth have 
risen by their virtues, and fallen through their vices, 
that politics and ethics cannot be separated with safety. 

There is a saying that “history is philosophy teach- 
ing by example,” and it is certainly one of the best ways 
to learn these lessons. Most of the Bible is pure his- 


tory; selected passages in the life of a single race, 


chosen with a view to their moral teachings. But the 
Jewish is not unique in being suited for this purpose; 
we should study the history of other nations in the 
same way. 

We should know also how God deals with the indi- 
vidual, not confining our attention to those whose 
biographies are given in the Bible, but studying any 
life of which we have the necessary information, his- 
torical characters as well as our friends and neighbors. 
We need to know how men think and feel, what they do 
and why. Such knowledge will make us more charita- 
ble and sensible. We shall then know what it means 
to “put yourself in another’s place” and learn the true 
meaning of the Golden Rule. 

We need to use greater wisdom in the study of the 
Bible. There is no subject in the world so poorly 
taught. We require an examination and a certificate 
before we allow a person to teach our children arithme- 


et 


GROW IN GRACE AND KNOWLEDGE _ 199 


tic and spelling, but we give anybody that is willing 
to take a class in Sunday school the far more difficult 
and important task of teaching religious truth. The 
Bible is not an easy book to understand. It requires 
long continued and intense study before we can get at 
the real meaning of those who wrote so long ago and 
under such different circumstances, and in foreign 
tongues. It is quite easy to find somebody to “teach a 
class in Sunday school” if you are not too particular as 
to what is taught or how it is taught; but it is hard to 
find any one sufficiently well qualified so as to be sure 
that truth and not error is being taught. 

We are, most of us, willing to talk but not willing 
enough to think and learn. Yet the latter is the more 
necessary. It is a poor teacher who does not spend 
more time in the preparation of a lesson than in teach- 
ing it. In the church the common custom is for the 
minister to spend six days in studying and one day in 
teaching. This period for preparation is none too long. 
I have known preachers to whom I would have been 
willing to extend this time to three or four weeks or 
even longer. 

Let each one of us apply his heart unto wisdom, and 
in this way hasten the time to come, when “the earth 
shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the 
Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” 


THE GEOMETRY OF ETHICS 


Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto 
life, and few there be that find it—Matthew 7: 14. 


You may, if your arithmetic is erratic, add up a 
column of figures a dozen times and get different sums. 
Only one is correct. It is necessarily the same about 
the more complicated problems of life, only we cannot 
see it so clearly. Elementary mathematics is the only 
science man has mastered so he can put real confidence 
in the results of his ratiocination. 

Science, which aims at certainty, approaches it by 
the method of trial and error, thousands of trials, thou- 
sands of errors, before an approximation to the truth 
is attained. Truth is one; falsehoods are infinite. 

Nine-tenths of the ideas that come into our heads are 
wrong. The object of education is to select the one 
that is right. 

Nine-tenths of the impulses that beset us are wrong. 
The task of civilization is to suppress the nine. 

No matter how complex the problem, there is never 
more than one right answer, one right way out, one 
strait and narrow path, hard to find and hard to follow, 
one road leading out of the maze of many false turns; 
all the others are blind alleys or paths that return upon 
themselves. 

It is an axiom of plane geometry that there can be 
only one straight line connecting two points. From the 


point where we are to the point where we wish to go, 
200 


“os 


ROADS OF DESTINY 201 


there is only one short straight road; all the other pos- 
sible paths are more or less divergent and devious. 

The rules of conduct are as invariable and absolute 
as the rules of geometry. The only difference is that 
we cannot see so clearly in ethics as in mathematics. 
The falling of a fog makes our road obscure, but does 
not alter its length or direction. 

There is only one best move in a game of chess, 
whether we know what it is or not. There is only one 
wisest action in any emergency, whether we know what 
it is or not. 

There are no indifferent actions, no equivalent 
choices. It may seem a matter of indifference which 
street you turn down in your morning stroll, but that 
is because you do not know what fate awaits you 
around the corner. If you turn down First Street you 
may be run over by an automobile. If you turn down 
Second Street you may meet a man who will make your 
fortune. If you turn down Third Street you may 
catch a fatal microbe. If you turn down Fourth Street 
you may see the girl you want to marry. 

If you knew, you could choose. But all the streets 
look equally inviting, and not knowing which is the 
best, you leave it to “chance.”’ You toss up a penny, 
but it is not a matter of chance which face of the 
penny falls uppermost, for that is determined by the in- 
evitable interaction of the forces of gravitation and 
rotary momentum. 

Even if you could know what lay before you on each 
of the optional avenues, you would not necessarily be 
able to select the best. It may be that Second or 
Fourth Street would lead you to more unhappiness 


202 THE GEOMETRY OF ETHICS 


than First or Third. Not knowing which is the most 
fortunate road, you would be grateful if on that morn- 
ing you should find all the others blocked by signs of 
“Street closed. Detour.” You would be glad to be 
forced into good fortune if you could not find your own 
way. Nobody wants freedom of choice except in those 
cases where choice would lead him toward his goal, 
whatever that may be. 

Nobody has the right to do wrong. Nobody but a 
congenital idiot would claim such a right and nobody 
but an incorrigible criminal would want to exercise it. 
Every sane man wants to do what is for his best inter- 
ests and every good man wants to do what is for the 
best interests of others as well. 

There can be no two opinions about this. The only 
thing we disagree about is what is for the best interests 
of ourselves and society. This is due solely to our ig- 
norance, for if we all knew always what was best to do, 
we should of course all want to do it. But, because we 
don’t and can’t always know, we have to allow con- 
siderable latitude as to thought and action, the more 
latitude in those fields where there is the more uncer- 
tainty. There is obviously but one course that ought 
to be pursued or would be pursued if we could know 
in advance the outcome of all our options. 


RELIGION AND RELATIVITY? 


Beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with 
the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.— 
II Peter 3:8. 


I READ recently in the papers that one of the bishops 
had warned the schools of his denomination to beware 
of Einstein as well as Darwin. 

I was glad to see that. I did not know that the 
bishops had heard of Einstein, although I knew that 
they were beginning to take Darwin seriously, sixty- 
five years after the appearance of The Origin of 
Species. Ignorant opposition is a better sign than ig- 
norant indifference. I was afraid that our ecclesiastical 
authorities would not get around to Einstein till 1970, 
when scientists would be busy about something else. 

Another encouraging thing about it is that the good 


1 Preachers will probably say of this that it is not a sermon and 
that a congregation would not listen to such a discussion of physical 
and metaphysical questions. ‘The first criticism I would not ven- 
ture to dispute, since they know better than I what constitutes a 
sermon. But on the second point I know they are wrong, for it 
has been tried out in various church forums and the people have 
not only heard it through patiently but lingered as long after to 
ask questions. I don’t say that this would be profitable preaching 
fifty-two times a year, but I do think that many preachers fail to 
realize the interest taken in such topics. I may add that all the 
“sermons” in this volume have been put to this test. They have 
been gradually hammered into shape on the heads of congrega- 
tions of divers denominations, and all I have done in preparing 
them for the press is to add quotations where needed to substan- 
tiate points and to append references to sources and further reading. 


203 


204 RELIGION AND RELATIVITY 


bishop perceives that such a revolutionary conception 
in the domain of psysics as the theory of relativity 
could not leave altogether unaffected our philosophy of 
the universe, and hence our ethics and our religion. In 
this he is wiser than some of our leading scientists who 
say that relativity is a purely mathematical conception 
with which the common man has no concern, for it is of 
no practical importance and so cannot affect his views 
or conduct. Well, so was the Copernican theory. It 
really does not make any difference to us whether we 
regard the sun as a Satellite of the earth or not, yet it 
did make quite a commotion in the theological world at 
the time, and the change of man’s point of view of the 
universe has profoundly influenced the current of hu- 
man affairs ever since. 

Pope Paul V was quite right in thinking that it con- 
cerned the Church. The Inquisitors were quite within 
their rights, although they may have been wrong, in 
expressing their opinion that to believe “that the sun 
is the center and does not revolve about the earth, is 
foolish, absurd, false in theology, and heretical, because 
expressly contrary to Holy Scriptures.” But Cardinal 
Bellarmin was quite wrong in commanding Galileo “in 
the name of his Holiness, the pope, and the whole Con- 
gregation of the Holy Office, to relinquish altogether 
the opinion that the sun is the center of the world and 
immovable, and that the earth moves, or henceforth to 
hold, teach, or defend it in any way whatsoever ver- 
bally or in writing.” 

The lesson that modern churchmen should learn from 
the Galileo case is not that they should ignore scientific 
speculation, not that they should be afraid to express 


THAT GALILEO AFFAIR 205 


their opinion as to its bearing on theology and ethics, 
but rather that they should seriously study such ques- 
tions and not assume too hastily that the acceptance 
of the new notion would be fatal to the faith. For if in 
spite of their protest the theory finds acceptance and 
the faith still survives, they are left in the embarrassing 
position of the doctor who daily meets on the street the 
man whom he told ten years ago that he had only six 
months to live, and who invariably greets him with the 
cordial inquiry: “How is your health, doctor?” Re- 
ligion has survived so many “death blows” in the course 
of the last ten thousand years that we may assume that 
it will not come to a violent end in our time. It is in 
more danger of succumbing to sleeping sickness. 

As we can now look back upon the battlefield of 1616 
from the height which science has since won, and can 
see both sides of it, we are struck with the futile folly 
of the whole affair. A modern astronomer would agree 
with the Pope that the sun is not immovable; in fact, 
he measures its motion, relative to the fixed stars, which 
he now knows are not “fixed” either. The modern 
mathematician, regarding all motion as relative, will 
admit that the choice between the two hypotheses is es- 
sentially a matter of convenience. By assuming that 
the sun is stationary and that the earth revolves around 
it, and rotates on its own axis, astronomical calcula- 
tions become simplified; and other phenomena, such as 
the flattening of the poles and the shifting of the Fou- 
caultian pendulum, fit into the same theory, whereas on 
the theory of a fixed earth we should have to assume 
extra and inconvenient hypotheses to explain them. 
But the astronomer, like the rest of us, uses the Ptole- 


206 RELIGION AND RELATIVITY 


maic theory in preference to the Copernican on all ordi- 
nary occasions. In his most serious treatises he will 
say, “The sun rises” at such a time, just as he says, 
“The moon rises,” and if you point out the contradic- 
tion, he does not seem a bit ashamed of his lapse to the 
old and exploded theory. He uses the heliocentric 
theory in explaining the structure of the solar system 
because it is more convenient. He uses the geocentric 
the rest of the time for the same reason.” 

The adoption of the relativist point of view does not 
relieve the odium that rests upon the Inquisitors who 
forced Galileo to recant. On the contrary, it makes it 
worse for them and better for Galileo. For if it is mere 
matter of convenience whether we assume the earth or 
the sun to be the stationary body, they had no right to 
punish those who chose the alternative hypothesis, or to 
prohibit their advocating it. On the other hand, while 
we should all respect Galileo more if he had stuck to 
his right of free thought and free speech and suffered 


2“The two propositions, ‘The earth turns’ and ‘it is more con- 
venient to suppose the earth turns round,’ have the same meaning; 
there is nothing more in the one than in the other.” (Poincaré: 
Science and Hypothesis, p. 85.) 

Freundlich, Director of the Einstein Tower at Potsdam, says that 
rotations, like linear motions, are to be regarded as relative, so, 
“whether we assume that the earth is at rest and the bodies circle 
round the earth, or that the bodies are at rest and the earth is 
rotating on its axis, is fundamentally unessential in describing the 
whole event.” Therefore it is “just as admissible to interpret the 
observed facts” in one way as the other. (See Freundlich, The 
Theory of Relativity, pp. 18, 90; The Foundations of Einstein’s 
Theory of Gravitation, pp. 91-94.) 

Cyrano de Bergerac, who was by no means such a fool as 
Rostand makes him out to be, said, ““When I pirouette it is the same 
as if I stood still and the world turned round.” 


ORIGINATING SPECIES 207 


martyrdom for it, we can see more excuse for him if he 
actually took the scientific view of the question and 
regarded the heliocentric theory as an ingenious and 
useful speculation, which indeed was the way he pre- 
sented it in the very “Dialogo” that got him into trou- 
ble. A scientist really does not care much whether you 
call his theory an “established fact” or a “working hy- 
pothesis,” so long as you let him use it in his business. 
The biologists are so busy nowadays originating new 
species of plants and animals that it is hard to get them 
to take as much interest as they ought to in what hap- 
pens to The Origin of Species. 

The scientific man, especially the scientific investi- 
gator, holds his theories with a light hand, but keeps a 
firm grip on his facts. This is just the opposite of the 
Jay attitude toward science. If the layman is interested 
in knowing the speed of light it is only because he 
thinks that he learns from it that all space is filled with 
a rigid elastic solid, at which he cannot but wonder. 
The scientist is interested in the ether only because it 
helps him in his calculation of the speed of light. 

A lecturer on wireless telephony will use in the 
course of the hour two or three more or less contradic- 
tory conceptions of electricity, the older one-fluid 
theory, the later two-fluid theory, and the modern elec- 
tron theory. If afterward you ask him which is right 
and which is wrong, you will not get a very satisfactory 
answer. He does not know and obviously does not 
care. You insist upon his telling you which theory he 
personally believes in. He really had not thought of 
“believing” in any of them. If he uses white chalk on 
the blackboard in preference to red it is not because he 


208 RELIGION AND RELATIVITY 


denies the existence of red chalk and its occasional use- 
fulness. The botanist alludes to a certain flower as a 
“poppy” and again as “Eschscholtzia.” He means the 
same thing but is using different languages; in the first 
case English, in the second case I don’t know what. 

At present physicists are in the amusing situation of 
having to use two irreconcilable, or at least irreconciled, 
theories of light. The ether-wave theory is needed to 
explain interference. The corpuscular theory is needed 
to explain the spectrum. So as Sir William Bragg puts 
it: * “On Mondays; Wednesdays, and Fridays we use 
the wave theory; on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Satur- 
days we think in streams of flying energy, quanta, or 
corpuscles.” 

Such inconsistencies, or antinomies, due to irrecon- 
cilable, or at least irreconciled, facts or theories, occur 
in science as they do in philosophy, theology and daily 
life. The apparent contradiction may persist for 
years, centuries, perhaps forever. Some of the best 
known and most persistent of such antinomies are 
those between mind versus matter, free-will versus de- 
terminism, atomicity versus continuity, the one versus 
the many, the omnipotence of God versus the existence 
of evil, absolute altruism versus essential selfishness, 
and nationalism versus internationalism. Metaphysi- 
cians have been disputing over some of them for 2500 
years without either side being able to deliver a knock- 
out blow to the opposite party, but scientists do not 
bother much about discordant theories, having found 
that they do not seriously interfere with investigation. 
On the contrary they often stimulate research in the 


3 Discovery, Sept., 1921. 


HARMLESS INCONSISTENCIES 209 


effort to eliminate the discrepancy. None of us can be 
completely consistent either in philosophy or conduct 
of life. 

Professor E. W. Stewart of the University of Iowa 
in discussing ‘“The Value of Inconsistency” in the 
Scientific Monthly of February, 1925, with Emerson’s 
observation, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin 
of little minds,” as a text, points out many cases in the 
history of science where inconsistency has led to im- 
portant discoveries while consistency has often retarded 
progress. He concludes: 


It is distressing to witness the somewhat insistent belief 
of young people that religious faith and scientific knowledge 
must be in agreement. . . . That there is no contradiction 
found in science to the most fundamental concepts of the 
theologian is far more important than the disagreements in 
minor details. While every one should wish for no conflict 
between science and theology, consistency is not an imme- 
diate goal and inconsistency must be anticipated as a nor- 
mal accompaniment of progress in such widely separated 
fields. He who spends his time attempting to reconcile the 
teachings of science and of theology surely cannot have a 
very important function in contributing to the progress of 
either. Scientific theories are to be lived and not merely 
believed. He who is engaged in the encouragement of the 
application of theory in either field is aiding in the prog- 
ress of the world. By his devotion to a cause and his will- 
ingness to be inconsistent without worry, he can make a 
definite contribution. . . . Emerson was right; past opin- 
ions should not cause excessive mental inertia. But the 
above conclusions take us much farther. Inconsistency in 
opinions held at one moment may be necessary for prog- 
ress and the individual should accept this view and cease 


210 RELIGION AND RELATIVITY 


to regard complete consistency as always either desirable or 
valuable. 


It is eminently desirable that people should have 
faith in science, but in order to have that they must 
have the same sort of faith in it that the scientist has. 
Otherwise they will regard it as a lot of ingenious fan- 
cies which are proved false by each succeeding genera- 
tion. Science is molting just now and looks queer. The 
public ought to understand clearly that the process 
means growth and not disease. 

Revolutions in science never go backwards and they 
differ from political revolutions in that nothing worth 
saving is lost in transition. The new theory must al- 
ways include all that the old one does and more. In 
their struggle for existence, formulas fight like snakes; 
the one that can swallow the other beats. 

I have gone back to Galileo for two reasons; first, 
because it is a good example of how not to treat a new 
scientific idea; and, second, because the Einstein theory 
is a continuation of the same development of thought, 
is meeting with the same sort of blind resistance and 
is liable to lead to popular misconceptions, as did the 
Copernican and Darwinian theories. It is already ap- 
parent that the occultists are planning to use the fourth 
dimension as an attic to put spooks in. 

Professor Eddington of Cambridge, the leading Brit- 
ish authority on relativity, discussed all three of these 
points in his Romanes Lecture at Oxford in 1922 * from 
which I quote the concluding paragraphs: 


4“The Theory of Relativity and Its Influence on Scientific 
Thought,” printed in the Scientific Monthly. 


FREEING FETTERED THOUGHT 211 


The present revolution of scientific thought follows in 
aatural sequence on the great revolutions at earlier epochs 
in the history of science. LEinstein’s special theory of rela- 
tivity, which explains the indeterminateness of the frame 
of space and time, crowns the work of Copernicus who first 
led us to give up our insistence on a geocentric outlook on 
nature; Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which re- 
veals the curvature or non-Euclidean geometry of space 
and time, carries forward the rudimentary thought of those 
earlier astronomers who first contemplated the possibility 
that their existence lay on something which was not flat. 
These earlier revolutions are still a source of perplexity in 
childhood, which we soon outgrow; and a time will come 
when Einstein’s amazing revelations have likewise sunk into 
the commonplaces of educated thought. 

To free our thought from the fetters of space and time 
is an aspiration of the poet and the mystic, viewed some- 
what coldly by the scientist who has too good reason to 
fear the confusion of loose ideas likely to ensue. If others 
have had a suspicion of the end to be desired, it has been 
left to Einstein to show the way to rid ourselves of these 
“terrestrial adhesions to thought.” And in removing our 
fetters he leaves us, not (as might have been feared) vague 
generalities for the ecstatic contemplation of the mystic, 
but a precise scheme of world-structure to engage the 
mathematical physicist. 


My purpose here is merely to show that there is rel- 
ativity between the theory of relativity and religion. 
I shall not attempt to explain what the theory is,’ still 
less what it means to religious thought. This is a task 


5] have attempted to put into popular language some of the rela- 
tively simple aspects of relativity in Easy Lessons in Einstein, and 
I have gone further in my Chats on Science, by putting the theory 
into words of one syllable. 


212 RELIGION AND RELATIVITY 


that will take a hundred years of hard thinking at the 
least. If the theologians do not want to bother about 
it until the question “has been settled by science” that 
is their privilege, only they must not complain if some- 
time in the twenty-first century they wake up to the 
fact that it has not been settled to their satisfacion, 
and that it is too firmly settled in the popular mind to 
be upset. Meantime they will be getting more and more 
out of touch with the trend of thought and will be miss- 
ing a lot of fun. 

It should be observed that there are three different 
theories of relativity and innumerable versions and 
ramifications of them. There is, first, the metaphysi- 
cal theory of relativity, the idea that all our measure- 
ments of space, time, and motion are merely relative, 
which dates back to Aristotle, Plato, and Plotinus. 
There is, second, the special theory of relativity enun- 
ciated by Einstein in 1905 to explain the conflict of ex- 
periments on ether drift. And third, the generalized 
theory of 1915, in which Einstein extended the concep- 
tion of relativity to include gravitation, which he 
ascribed to the structure of time and space, rather than 
the hypothetical attractive force invoked by Newton. 
The Einstein theories differ from the ancient theory in 
being definite mathematical systems capable of being 
verified or refuted at some points by certain very deli- 
cate astronomical and physical measurements. So far 
the experimental evidence of the last ten years is on the 
whole in favor of Einstein,® although it is regarded as 


6 There is at present only one piece of experimental evidence 
against Einstein, the report in 1925 by Prof. D. C. Miller that his 
repetition of the Michelson-Morley experiment on Mt. Wilson 
showed a partial drift of the ether. 


ORTHODOX RELATIVITY 213 


inconclusive by many scientists. It is yet too early to 
say whether Einstein’s mathematical schemes will be 
incorporated intact into our science or in what ways 
they will be restricted, expanded, or modified. But it 
is already evident that the theory of relativity, to- 
gether with Planck’s quantum theory and Bohr’s atomic 
theory, which are contemporary and closely connected 
with it, have definitely and permanently altered our 
ideas of the universe. Whatever may be their future 
fate, they have already proved their value in correlating 
unconnected facts and in guiding research into new 
fields. 

That they will have an effect upon religious thought 
is also apparent, not only from the alarm of the bishop 
to whom I referred in the beginning, but even more 
significantly by the efforts now made to assimilate the 
new ideas to the old doctrines. 

That relativity is not necessarily incompatible with 
the old theology is shown by the fact that the honor of 
being a forerunner of Einstein is claimed for both St. 
Thomas Aquinas ‘ and Jonathan Edwards.* 

Let us consider one instance of the possible bearing 
of the new ideas upon religious thought. One of the 
popular delusions that religion has always had to fight, 
as has science also, is our common crude conception of 
matter as something essentially solid, unalterably 
heavy, impenetrable, continuous, unmoving, inert, inde- 
structible. Democritus and Lucretius struck a blow at 
this idea when they advanced the notion that all ma- 
terial bodies were composed of invisible atoms inces- 


7™In the London Nation, Dec. 27, 1919. 
8In Science, Oct. 29, 1920. 


214 RELIGION AND RELATIVITY 


santly in motion, but it took some two thousand years 
for their view to gain general acceptance, if indeed it 
has yet penetrated the common mind. A hundred years 
ago Dalton took it up and it became the basis of mod- 
ern physics and chemistry, but the atoms were still 
looked upon as little round hard things, incapable of 
decomposition. 

But according to present conceptions an atom con- 
sists of an inconceivably minute nucleus, charged with 
positive eletricity, around which revolve from one (in 
hydrogen) to ninety-two (in uranium) satellites of 
negative electricity at speeds ranging from 1,300 to 
124,000 miles per second. That is, the actual amount 
of matter, if you can still regard it as material, in an ap- 
parently solid body occupies only about a million-mil- 
lionth part of its bulk, and if we could put a big man 
into a press and squeeze all the vacant space out of him 
he would shrink to a pinhead size.° 

We may go further and say that this amount of mat- 
ter, little as it is, does not remain constant either in 
mass or in substance. For according to Einstein it in- 
creases in mass the faster it travels up to the speed of 
light, and faster it cannot go. This leaves only one of 
Newton’s three laws of motion intact, the action-equals- 
reaction one.*° Matter itself is now regarded as a form 
of energy, or as transformable into energy. 

It is supposed that all the other chemical elements 
are built up out of hydrogen atoms as a wall is built of 
bricks. The first step of this process would be to build 
a helium atom out of four atoms of hydrogen. But this 


9 Atoms and Rays, by Sir Oliver Lodge, p. 14. 
10 Lodge, p. 195. 


THE ANNIHILATION OF MATTER cdi ty 


involves the annihilation of matter and the creation of 
energy. If, for instance, it were possible to transform 
10,077 pounds of hydrogen into helium, only 10,000 
pounds of helium would be produced. The remaining 
seventy-seven pounds—no, that is wrong, for it would 
not remain—I should say rather, the other seventy- 
seven pounds, would vanish from the material world and 
in its place an enormous amount of energy would be 
produced, passing off presumably as radiant light and 
heat. This transformation has not yet been accom- 
plished in the laboratory but several young scientists 
are experimenting along this line and they may some- 
time succeed. It would be very handy to be able to 
make helium for our dirigibles at will and get enough 
power to run them thrown in free. It is believed that 
the light that we get from the sun and stars comes 
largely from such decomposition of matter into energy. 
Four million tons of the sun’s mass is estimated to be 
evaporating off every second in the form of light. 

This is such a decided change of view from the con- 
ceptions held in the last century, and still holding in the 
minds of most men, that it has been referred to as “‘the 
dematerialization of matter.” ** 

Charles Nordmann, astronomer to the Paris Observa- 
tory, concludes: 


11 Rougier, Philosophy and the New Physics, p. 62. Dr. J. H. 
Jeans in his new theory of the source of light in the sun and stars 
suggests that the negative electrons and the positive nucleus of 
the atoms may fall together and by so neutralizing their charges 
annihilate one another and pass away “in a blaze of glory.” He 
says: “Nothing in the suggestion appears to conflict with modern 
atomic physics.” (Nature, Dec. 6, 1924; Jan. 24, 1925.) 

12 Einstein and the Universe, p. 115. 


216 RELIGION AND RELATIVITY 


From all this it follows, by calculation and by the simple 
and elegant reasoning of Einstein, of which I here convey 
only the faintest adumbration, that mass and energy are 
the same thing, or are at least the two different sides of 
one and the same coin. There is, then, no longer a mate- 
rial mass. ‘There is nothing but energy in the external 
universe. A strange—in a sense, an almost spiritual—turn 
for modern physics to take. 


Physicists whose profession is the study of matter do 
not take matter so materialistically as do other people. 
Poincaré says: 


Masses are coefficients it is convenient to introduce into 
calculations. We could reconstruct all mechanics by at- 
tributing different values to all the masses. This new 
mechanics would not be in contradiction either with expe- 
rience or with the general principles of dynamics. Only 
the equations of this new mechanics would be less simple.** 


But do not fall into the error of supposing that “sci- 
ence has proved that matter does not exist.” To ex- 
plain a thing is not to explode it. If the concept of 
matter is, as all our concepts must be, a fabrication of 
the mind, this does not imply that we can get along 
without it. Although the physicist reduces matter to a 
small italic m, stone is still heavy, and steel is still 
sharp. And a stone will bruise and a steel will pierce 
just as much as if we had not found out its formula. 
We do not change nature when we change our minds. 

Yet it does make a difference, after all, how we look 
upon the external world. The more we know about 


13 Poincaré, Science and Hypothesis, p. 76. 


HOW MIND SHAPES REALITY 217 


matter, the better we can manage it. And when we 
realize that the laws of nature are made in our own 
minds they cannot hold our minds in bondage. The 
crass materialism of former centuries should be impos- 
sible in the future. 

As it is important to understand just what the 
relativist means when he speaks of the part the mind 
takes in the formulation of the laws of nature and in 
the selection of fundamental concepts, I will quote from 
one of the best authorities on the question, Professor 
Eddington of Cambridge: ** 


Mind filters out matter from the meaningless jumble of 
qualities, as the prism filters out the colors of the rainbow 
from the chaotic pulsations of white light. Mind exalts 
the permanent and ignores the transitory; and it appears 
from the mathematical study of relations that the only 
way in which mind can achieve her object is by picking 
out one particular quality as the permanent substance of 
the perceptual world, partitioning a perceptual time and 
space for it to be permanent in, and, as a necessary conse- 
quence of this Hobson’s choice, the laws of gravitation and 
mechanics and geometry have to be obeyed. Is it too much 
to say that mind’s search for permanence has created the 
world of physics? . . . The conclusion is that the whole 
of those laws of nature which have been woven into a 
unified scheme—mechanics, gravitation, electro-dynamics 
and optics—have their origin, not in any special mecha- 
nism of nature, but in the workings of the mind. 


14TIn his Space, Time and Gravitation, probably the best book to 
give the general reader some idea of the new theories and their 
significance. A later book, Bertrand Russell’s The ABC of the 
Atom, is also commendable for this purpose, 


218 RELIGION AND RELATIVITY 


The theologians do not seem to know a friend when 
they see him. They have always insisted that the 
material universe is finite in space and time, but they 
view with suspicion the relativists, who not only believe 
it but undertake to prove it and to measure its dimen- 
sions.*° 

According to the theory of relativity, the space-and- 
time framework in which all things happen may be re- 
garded as rolled into a sort of four-dimensional sphere, 
so that the universe is limited although unbounded; it 
has no end and yet is not immeasurably great. We 
know that it is so with the surface of our earth. One 
might travel forever in any direction without reaching 
the end of the earth, yet he could never get more than 
twelve thousand miles from home, for if he went farther 
he would be nearing his starting point. So too a ray of 
light starting out from anywhere in any direction would 
on account of the curvature of space return in the 
course of time to its origin, and this time is estimated 
at a thousand million years. From this corollary of 
the relativity theory, Professor Eddington deduces 
some curious consequences: 


A ray of light from the sun would thus take about 1,000 
million years to go round the world; and after the journey 
the rays would converge again at the starting point, and 
then diverge for the next circuit. The convergent would 
have all the characteristics of a real sun so far as light and 
heat are concerned, only there would be no substantial body 

15 “The finite character of the universe appears capable of ex- 
perimental demonstration.’ Gumbel, Science Abstracts, 25, No. 
257- 


SUN GHOSTS 219 


present. Thus corresponding to the sun we might see a 
series of ghosts occupying the positions where the sun was 
I,000, 2,000, 3,000, etc., million years ago, if (as seems 
probable) the sun has been luminous for so long. 

It is rather a pleasing speculation that records of the pre- 
vious states of the sidereal universe may be automatically 
reforming themselves on the original sites. Perhaps one or 
more of the many spiral nebulz are really phantoms of 
our own stellar system. Or it may be that only a propor- 
tion of the stars are substantial bodies; the remainder are 
optical ghosts revisiting their old haunts.1® 


This means that if the world is round—I mean the 
whole universe, not our own minor planet—a ray of 
light would roll round and round in it like a ball inside 
a roulette wheel, or rather, since that simile will be in- 
comprehensible to you, like the marble of pigs-in- 
clover. Although the light from the sun disperses in 
every direction all the rays come together again at this 
antipodal focus, only to scatter and meet at their 
original rendezvous. Except of course such of them 
as get lost on the way by running up against planets 
or being absorbed by drifting dust or pulled out of the 
straight track by gravitation, as Einstein discovered. 
Stars may have their doubles at opposite points. 

It is an interesting idea, anyhow, and probably some 
preacher, some real preacher, will pick it up and make 
a sermon out of it. For the sun is not the only thing 
that is dogged by the images of its past selves. We 
shine too, although only by reflected light. It must be, 


16 Space, Time and Gravitation, p. 161. 


220, RELIGION AND RELATIVITY 


then, that our radiations are traveling about some- 
where in the world and will be reproducing our looks 
and acts on the cinema screen of the farthest horizon 
of space and time a thousand million years after we 
are dead. If we are going to have that sort of immor- 
tality imposed upon us, we would prefer to pick our 
poses. The moral of it is—although probably the 
preacher would draw a different one—that if we are 
going to do anything we are ashamed of we should go 
inside the house and pull down the blinds or wait till it 
is dark. But this Jesson is needless, for such precau- 
tions are customary. Even then one can’t feel quite 
safe in sinning. There are the X-rays, you know—and 
nobody knows what other invisible pencils may be 
registering all our actions or even thoughts—or, what’s 
worse, the desires that we don’t dare think. They, too, 
must leave their mark somewhere. 

The implications of the relativity theory in regard 
to time are quite as startling as those in regard to space. 
Time and space are indeed so inseparably connected 
that we cannot even conceive of them independently. 
Einstein “assumes that there is a fundamental relation 
between time and space, such that, to put it simply, no 
one can tell what time it is until he knows where he is, 
and he cannot tell where he is until he knows when he 
is.”’ nay 

The theory suggests the possibility, though it does not 
imply the actuality, of a reversal of time, or the over- 
lapping of past and future, “‘so that, in principle, it is 
possible to experience events now that will in part be an 


17] borrow this concise expression from Prof. A. G. Webster, 
The Review, Jan. 31, 1920. 


THE PASSING OF MATERIALISM 221 


effect of my future resolves and actions.” ** One of the 
deepest thinkers of our day, Prof. Alfred North White- 
head of Harvard University, in the following passage 
from his book on The Concept of Nature shows how 
widely the trend of twentieth-century thought differs 
from the mechanistic and materialistic conceptions pre- 
vailing in the last century: 


The materialistic theory has all the completeness of the 
thought of the middle ages, which had a complete answer 
to everything, be it in heaven or hell or in nature. There 
is a trimness about it, with its instantaneous present, its 
vanished past, its non-existent future, and its inert matter. 
This trimness is very medieval and ill accords with brute 
facts. 

The theory which I am urging admits a greater ultimate 
mystery and a deeper ignorance. The past and future meet 
and mingle in an ill-defined present. The passage of na- 
ture, which is only another name for the creative force of 
existence, has no narrow ledge of definite instantaneous 
present within which to operate. Its operative presence 
which is now urging nature forward must be sought for 
throughout the whole, in the remote past as well as the 
narrowest breadth of any present duration. Perhaps also 
in the unrealized future. Perhaps also in the future which 
might be as well as the actual future which will be. 


The possibility of a new conception of the relations 
of past and future was discussed at the Aristotelian So- 


18 From Space, Time, Matter, by Hermann Weyl. I have dis- 
cussed this point in the chapter “T'angling Up the Time-Line” of 
Chats on Science. Esclangon goes so far as to propose an experi- 
ment to prove the inversion of time as a reality. Comptes Rendus 
173:1340 (1921). 


1s 4 RELIGION AND RELATIVITY 


ciety by Dean Inge of St. Paul’s, one of the few clergy- 
men of our time who are interested in metaphysical 
questions. I quote from the London 77mes report: 


We happen to be moving away from 1900 and towards 
1930, just as the earth happens to revolve in one direction 
and not in the other. But can 1900 and 1930 not both be 
equally real, each holding its fixed position in an unchange- 
able series? 

Were that so, the direction of the stream of time would 
have a meaning only for us, and might have the opposite 
meaning for other consciousnesses, and no meaning for an 
absolute consciousness. The interest of the speculation ex- 
tends from time to cause and effect. A common concep- 
tion of causation involves the idea of a transaction between 
two things of which the one is active, the other passive. 
But this interpretation of cause is being replaced in science 
by the idea that “cause” and “effect” indicate nothing 
more than different positions in the time sequence. When 
we speak of the past determining the future, we may also 
speak of the future justifying, explaining, or even deter- 
mining the past. Past and future, cause and effect, may 
indeed be mere aspects of a timeless reality. 


This reminds us that St. Thomas Aquinas taught that 
God sees past, present, and future at once as an eternal 
present. It also reminds us of the verse: 


Time flies. 
But no, 
Time stays, 
We go.’® 


19 A free translation from Ronsard. 


IS NATURE RATIONAL? 223 


Let me give you one other hint of the strange specu- 
lative possibilities suggested by the new physics, al- 
though it is a blow to man’s conceit in assuming that 
the universe is made after the manner of his own mind, 
that he can ever reason it out. I quote the concluding 
passage of Bertrand Russell’s The ABC of the Atom: 


The theory of relativity has shown that most of tradi- 
tional dynamics, which was supposed to contain scientific 
laws, really consisted of conventions as to measurement, 
and was strictly analogous to the “‘great law” that there are 
always three feet to a yard. In particular, this applies to 
the conservation of energy. This makes it plausible to 
suppose that every apparent law of nature which strikes us 
as reasonable is not really a law of nature, but a concealed 
convention, plastered on to nature by our love of what we, 
in our arrogance, choose to consider rational. Eddington 
hints that a real law of nature is likely to stand out by the 
fact that it appears to us irrational, since in that case it is 
less likely that we have invented it to satisfy our intel- 
lectual taste. And from this point of view he inclines to 
the belief that the quantum-principle is the first real law 
of nature that has been discovered in physics. 

This raises a somewhat important question: Is the world 
“rational,” i.e., such as to conform to our intellectual hab- 
its? Or is it “irrational,” ie., not such as we should have 
made it if we had been in the position of the Creator? 


Since little thought has as yet been given to the in- 
fluence of the doctrine of relativity upon social and 
ethical questions, I will conclude with a quotation from 
Viscount Haldane, who has given special attention to 
that point in his work on The Reign of Relativity: 


224 RELIGION AND RELATIVITY 


Assuming the principle of relativity to mean all that has 
been said, what guidance does it offer for the conduct of 
our individual lives? I do not think that the question is 
‘a difficult one to answer. The real lesson which the prin- 
ciple of the relativity of knowledge teaches us is always 
to remember that there are different orders in which both 
our knowledge and the reality it seeks have differing 
forms. These orders we must be careful to distinguish and 
not to confuse. We must keep ourselves aware that truth 
in terms of one order may not necessarily be a sufficient 
guide in the search for truth in another one. We have, in 
other words, to be critical of our categories. As an aid to 
our practice, the principle points us in a direction where 
we may possess our souls with tranquillity and courage. 
We stand warned against ‘‘other-worldliness” in a multitude 
of concealed forms. We are protected, too, if the doctrine 
be well-founded, against certain specters which obtrude 
themselves in the pilgrim’s path. Materialism, scepticism, 
and obscurantism alike vanish. The real is there, but it is 
akin in its nature to our own minds, and it is not terrify- 
ing. Death loses much of its sting and the grave, of its 
victory. For we have not only the freedom that is of the 
essence of mind, but we are encouraged to abstract and 
withdraw ourselves from the apparent overwhelmingness of 
pain and even of death itself. Such things cease to be of 
the old importance when they lose the appearance of final 
reality. 

There may come to us, too, contentment of spirit, and a 
peace which passes our everyday understanding. We grow 
in tolerance, for we see that it is in expression rather than 
in intention that our fellow-men are narrow. We realize 
that we are all of us more, even in moments of deep depres- 
sion, than we appear to ourselves to be, and that humanity 
extends beyond the limits that are assigned even by itself 
to itself. 


THE CREED OF RELATIVITY 225 


It is a creed that if it be true helps those who can make 
it their own to dispel obscurities, and to lighten for them- 
selves and for others the burden and the apparent mystery 
of human life. It is a creed that stimulates the practice of 
unselfishness in social and religious life, interpreted as fully 
harmonizing with the dictates of philosophical thought. “If 
any man shall do His will, he shall know of the doctrine!” 


THE ETHICS OF EVOLUTION 


I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up chil- 
dren unto Abraham. 

And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees; therefore 
every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and 
cast into the fire. 

I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that 
cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy 
to bear: he shali baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire: 

Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, 
and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the 
chaff with unquenchable fire-—Matthew 3: 9-12. 


IN visiting one of the states where efforts were being 
made to pass a law prohibiting the teaching of evolu- 
tion I was told of a lobbyist who approached a mem- 
ber of the legislature with the remark that he had been 
informed on the best authority that there was an evolu- 
tionist in the state university. 

“Great heavens!” replied the hortified legislator, 
“You don’t mean to say that he practices it, do you?” 

In this the legislator showed that practical common 
sense which is fortunately so often characteristic of our 
politicians. He was of course wrong in assuming so 
hastily that the practice of the principles of evolution 
would necessarily be wrong. But he got straight at the 
root of the matter when he saw at first glance that the 
important question was their application to the con- 
duct of life. 

Not all our theologians have shown the same per- 


spicacity. They have been so absorbed in the specula- 
226 


EVOLUTION IN ACTION 227 


tive and historical aspects of the question that they 
have ignored its vital relation to present-day problems 
within their own field. They have dipped into geology 
and embryology, where at the best their efforts could 
not contribute much to the clarification of the question, 
and have neglected to study the ethics of it, where their 
expert aid was much needed. They have been much 
concerned with the question whether the account of 
creation given in the first chapters of Genesis was in 
irreconcilable conflict with the account given in the 
latest textbook on geology or whether the two could 
be made to harmonize, with a bit of budging on both 
sides. 

But whether they agree or not, and whether we be- 
lieve them both or neither, they both deal with a past 
event, and a past event is of no value to us unless we 
can bring it to bear upon the problems of the present. 
Science and religion are alike in this, that they are, or 
should be, forward-looking and practical. They both 
make use of the records of the past for the interpreta- 
tion of the present and for guidance in the future. The 
creeds of the church and the textbooks of science are 
of value, not because of the historic facts they contain, 
but because of what they tell us of the fundamental 
principles of the universe and human life that are per- 
manent and perpetually applicable.* 

The question whether man first appeared on this 
planet 6,000 or 600,000 years ago does not matter ex- 
cept in so far as we may learn from it how to extend his 
period of survival. What we want to know is how long 
man can exist: how long he has existed is in itself an 

1 This important point I have discussed on pp. 66 and 148. 


228 THE ETHICS OF EVOLUTION 


idle question. The question of how man was made be- 
comes of importance only when we come to consider 
what we can make of him. Then any minutest bit of 
evidence that we can gather concerning his history and 
ancestry becomes worth studying in the hope that it 
may aid us to some general laws as to the nature and 
development of living beings. Since we cannot tell in 
advance what will come handy in our reconstruction of 
the record of the world we gather up all the things that 
seem to have significance and preserve them in our 
museums and libraries, fragments of unknown fossils, 
broken bricks of cuneiform inscriptions, scraps of un- 
decipherable writing, scattered and disconnected facts. 
But none of them is really of value until it can be fitted 
into the general scheme of things. 

There are many such unrelated things in our 
museums; there are many in the Bible. Consider, for 
instance, the account of the creation of woman, which 
has somehow received less attention and aroused less 
discussion than the creation of man, though no man 
would say that it was an event of less importance. It 
appears to be a unique event. There is no record in 
Scripture or science of its having occurred before or 
since. The Bibie does not imply that any other woman 
was ever made that way. The rector’s wife in the town 
where I lived used to teach her class that all men to 
this day have one less rib than women because Adam 
was deprived of one, but I understand that this is not 
confirmed by anatomists, though I have to take their 
statements on faith, not having made any dissections 
myself. The incident is unrepeatable and hence un- 


A WILD SURMISE 229 


confirmable by experiment. Modern plastic surgery 
has taken out ribs and made them into leg bones but 
never so far into a complete woman. 

What, then, can be done with the story of the crea- 
tion of Eve? Nothing, absolutely nothing. A scientist 
may believe it a part of an infallible revelation or he 
may regard it as highly improbable that Eve was made 
in a way so different from other women, but he can 
neither prove nor disprove it. Whether he personally 
believes it or not can make no possible difference to his 
science, nor, so far as I can see, to his religion. Not 
Eve, but her living daughter, is his problem and ours. 

Let me generalize this view of our relation toward the 
records of the past. Suppose I start a new religious 
sect having for its fundamental tenet that the earth was 
created instantaneously out of nothing by fiat of the 
Almighty on January 1, 1925. IfI should take such a 
stand I might have difficulty in gaining converts but I 
could defy anybody to disprove my creed. Nobody 
could say that it was impossible, for it would be just 
as easy for Omnipotence to create a world in a second 
as in six days, or six hundred million years; create it 
complete, with people grown up, clothed, and housed, 
with all the evidences of a remote past already made, 
with fossils stored in the rocks, books stored in the 
libraries and memories stored in the minds. Sir Wil- 
liam Osler tells us that he can remember when the 
professor of Natural Theology at Oxford argued that 
the fossils found in sedimentary rocks were no evidence 
of antiquity but were put there by Satan for the pur- 
pose of testing faith in the Bible; they were petrified 


230 THE ETHICS OF EVOLUTION 


temptations to infidelity, so to speak. Other objections 
could be quite as easily disposed of. The Great War 
of course never occurred, but the histories and recol- 
lections of it were prepared by God for the purpose of 
warning the human race against such folly and cruelty 
in the future. The more I think about it, the more 
enamored I am of the polemic possibilities of this doc- 
trine of recent creation. If anybody would hire Car- 
negie Hall for a joint debate on the question I believe 
that I could defend the thesis against any arguments 
that could be brought against it. Nobody has success- 
fully confuted Archbishop Whately’s Historic Doubts 
Relative to Napoleon Bonaparte. 

The point is that we can never be certain of any 
event in the past in the same sense that we can be 
certain of an event that we can today observe and re- 
peat at will. History must necessarily remain on an 
inferior plane of validity as compared with science, and 
the historical sciences such as geology and archeology 
can never attain the same certitude as the experimental 
sciences such as physics and chemistry. For example, 
we can never know for sure how life originated. It is 
surmised that in the early ages certain colloidal par- 
ticles composed of compounds of carbon, hydrogen, 
nitrogen, and oxygen, perhaps in contact with a catalyst 
such as iron oxide, and under the influence of the ultra- 
violet rays of sunshine, might have acquired the power 
of feeding and fission, and so become the progenitors 
of all future living beings. Certain biologists even be- 
lieve it possible under some such conditions to produce 
life now from inorganic matter and are experimenting to 


LIVING TRUTH AND DEAD PAST 231 


this end.” Suppose some day they should succeed and 
find out a way of making an ameba out of the ele- 
ments: it would not prove that life had originated on 
the earth in that fashion. It might have come about in 
some very different way. There is always a certain un- 
certainty about any record of the past, whether it be 
historical or geological, though the evidence for it may 
be irresistibly convincing to one who considers it. 
Fortunately, no vital truth is altogether dependent 
for its validity upon the records of the past, although it 
may have been derived from their study. If the Fun- 
damentalists were to burn up all the books on evolu- 
tion, as the papers report they are being burned in cer- 
tain communities of our country, 1f they should prohibit 
the teaching of evolution all over the world, that would 
not suffice. They would have to go further and chisel 
out all the fossils throughout the earth, for if they re- 
main in the rocks somebody is sure to find them in time 
and draw the same inferences from them as to their age 
and origin. Suppose even this could be accomplished 
and all the paleontological evidences of evolution elimi- 
nated from the earth: evolution would still remain as 
active an agent as ever in the molding of living beings. 
Shutting our eyes does not affect the external world. 
It only makes us stumble about in it. Suppose that the 
Soviet should sweep over the earth and destroy all the 
sacred books of every faith. God would still reign and, 
2“Experimental abiogenesis is the goal of biology.”—Jacques 
Loeb. “With the astonishing means that modern science possesses 
already, with its continually increasing powers, I do not doubt that 


it will some day be sufficiently equipped to produce life artificially.” 
—Paul Becquerel. 


232 THE ETHICS OF EVOLUTION 


I believe, mankind would again find Him in various 
ways. God is not affected by what we think of him— 
fortunately. He is not annihilated when we forget him. 

Whether evolution be theory or hypothesis is hardly 
worth discussing. What we need to know is how evolu- 
tion acts. Whether evolution is fact or fable as applied 
to the past, it is a force in the present. We can ignore 
the past, or misconstrue it, without much harm, but we 
have to deal with evolution as a ruling power in modern 
life and a formative factor of the future. 

Never was it so important that we should understand 
evolution, for never was it so active as at present, when 
new forms of plants and animals are being made to or- 
der and when man has, for good or ill, learned how to 
control the multiplication of the race. I quote from 
one of the leading geneticists of the country, Dr. 
C. B. Davenport, Director of the Station for Experi- 
mental Evolution,* at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island: 


There are now thousands of forms of animals and plants 
that reproduce their kind which did not exist a century ago. 
Within the last ten years there have been produced scores 
of forms of the banana fly never before seen by the eye of 
man. Indeed, the very day on which the ancestors of some 
new types first appeared is known, and many of these types 
have persisted to the present day. 

We know indeed not a few forms which have appeared 
recently and which fulfill the essential conditions of species 
as the naturalist finds them in nature. These forms differ 
by two or more constant traits from other species. They 
are quite as infertile with other species as some wild species 


3 Note that the name is not “Theoretical” or ‘Historical’ Evolu- 
tion. 


INVENTING NEW SPECIES 233 


are with each other. The principal difference between them 
and wild species is that their beginnings have been seen and 
are known to be recent while that of wild species has not 
been seen and so their origin is of unknown date. But it 
is known that thousands of wild species that we have on 
earth today did not exist in earlier geological ages, just as 
there are thousands of species that lived in past geological 
ages that are not living today. 


Nowadays we hear some of the opponents of Darwin 
asserting that no new species have arisen since the 
world began. ‘This is amusing, for it shows that they 
have not even read the title of the book they are at- 
tacking. So let me give it in its full old-fashioned form 
as it appeared in 1857: “‘On the Origin of Species by 
Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of 
Favored Races in the Struggle for Life.” 

The point of Darwin’s argument was that there oc- 
curred in nature a selective process similar to the arti- 
ficial selection practiced by man. Nobody questioned 
the fact that it was possible by proper selection and 
breeding to develop new forms of dogs and pigeons, 
fruits and flowers, that were so distinct that if they 
had been found growing wild they would have been 
classed as different species. The only question—and 
this is questioned still by many good evolutionists—is 
whether the struggle for life in nature works the same 
way. 

The importance of evolution as a policy appears 
when we think that the future of the human race and 
of any particular branch of it depends primarily upon 
the quality and character of its posterity. The theory 
of evolution has been a great stimulus to experimental 


234 THE ETHICS OF EVOLUTION 


researches in heredity and many of its laws have been 
discovered and verified. It is now known that physical 
structure, mental abilities, and moral disposition are in- 
herited according to mathematical ratios that can be 
calculated in advance, where the data are ascertainable. 
A child’s talents are limited like his fingers. 

Neither collective wisdom nor individual piety can 
prevent a nation from lapsing into incapacity and cor- 
ruption if the breeding of coming generations comes 
from the inferior rather than the superior stocks of the 
community. It makes little difference in the long run 
how the people cast their ballots. The fate of the 
country is actually determined by how they combine 
their chromosomes. The finest form of government is 
futile unless it is managed by men of capacity. The 
purest form of religion is bound to degenerate if the 
quality of the population deteriorates. 

By the application of such laws of eugenics as are 
already known, and without infringing upon conven- 
tional morality, it would be possible practically to 
eliminate feeble-mindedness and hereditary viciousness 
and to raise up a race that would be superior physically, 
mentally and morally to any that the world has hith- 
erto known. 

Very little can be done in this direction by legisla- 
tion. Very much could be done by moral suasion, by 
holding up higher moral ideals, by instilling respect for 
the race, responsibility for posterity, and unsefishness 
in sacrificing present pleasures for the benefit of future 
generations; in short, by preaching. 

Here is a most influential function that the church 
has languidly relinquished. While ministers are com- 


THE EUGENICS OF ABRAHAM 235 


plaining that the field of ecclesiastical activities has nar- 
rowed through the taking over by the state of educa- 
tion, charity, and the like,* they are neglecting a more 
important field to which they have historic claim and 
where they can exert a greater influence over the fu- 
ture than in any other possible way. In primitive re- 
ligions the priest had a great deal to say about what 
marriages should be made. His modern successor 
mostly confines himself to the perfunctory perform- 
ance of the marriage ceremony. 

If a new religious sect should arise, composed of 
members of good hereditary stock and endowed with a 
sufficient variety of desirable qualities, if such a com- 
munity should strictly segregate itself, geographically 
or socially, and maintain for a number of generations a 
high standard of marital relationship and child welfare, 
there would be developed a “peculiar people” that 
would stand as high above the average of the world as 
the highest races do now above the lowest. They could, 
if they desired, rule the rest of the world through force 
of sheer superiority of mind and moral purpose. 

Something of this sort was attempted, according to 
Prof. Ralph E. Danforth, with the children of Israel 
but failed through their disobedience to the law of 
Jehovah. I quote from his article on “Religion as a 


Factor in Human Evolution”: ° 


Paleontology shows us that single individuals, or single 
pairs, have been the starters of new species, rather than 
great masses of individuals. The plan which was laid down 
for Abraham, and conceived by him, would have produced 


4See p. 32 on this point. 
5In Scientific Monthly, Feb., 1925. 


236 THE ETHICS OF EVOLUTION 


a new species of superior human beings if it had been con- 
sistently and unfailingly carried out. Even as it is, with 
all their breaches of the original sacred plan, the Jews are 
a remarkable people, decidedly distinctive in many ways, 
if not altogether in the ways originally planned. They 
came very near to producing a new and distinct human 
species, and although they fell short, they have pointed the 
way in which it can be done... . 

The plan proposed for Abraham and his descendants in- 
volved pure line breeding, with careful selection of mates, 
and a code of ethics highly moral, sanitary and religious. 
The intense faith in the guiding supervision of God, the 
Creator of all things, was a support without which the plan 
never would have been carried out to such an extent and 
during so long a period of time. 

The genetic principle of selection and rejection which 
some holy fathers have seen through a glass darkly in the 
form of a doctrine of divine election, and which we, using 
the symbolism of John the Baptist and of Jesus, may well 
call the principle of the ax and the fan, was foreshadowed 
in the plan of Abraham. 

The plan of Abraham is as simple as nature itself, whose 
deepest laws it involves; and it is as sure as physics and 
chemistry through which God works, for any who will con- 
sistently follow it through the generations, a thing which 
the descendants of the old Abraham have done but faultily, 
very faultily. It is equally the plan of Jesus, the plan of 
nature, and the plan of the Kingdom of God and His 
righteousness. 


It shocks our sensibilities to read in regard to the 
peoples of Palestine: ““When your God puts them into 
your hands and you rout them, then you must extermi- 
nate them, making no compact with them and showing 


A SUBSTITUTE FOR WAR 237 


them no mercy.” ® But we must not be too hasty in 


condemning this policy. If the Canaanites were as bad 
as they were painted, it would have been better for the 
Jewish race and for the world at large if the Israelites 
had obeyed the injunction of Jehovah instead of inter- 
marrying with them as they did. But we cannot judge 
of that, for we have the history from only one side. 
Doubtless the “Book of the Wars of Jehovah,” ’ as 
written by the enemy, would read differently from that 
quoted in the Scriptures. 

The method of selection as practiced in nature and 
primitive peoples, the relentless struggle for existence 
resulting in the survival of the fittest, involves appalling 
waste and terrible suffering. For lack of knowledge it 
was indiscriminating and sometimes failed of its object 
in spite of its cruelty.® 

We can nowadays secure the same results by milder 
methods. We can, for instance, segregate, instead of 
slaughtering, individuals possessing defects of body or 
mind undesirable to perpetuate. Such negative and re- 
strictive measures, however, would be of little avail un- 
less accompanied by such positive eugenic measures as 
would encourage earlier marriage and larger families 
for the best of our young men and women. But this 
requires a religious zeal and spirit of self-sacrifice, a 


6 Deuteronomy 7:2. 

7 Numbers 21:14. 

8 For instance, if we assume that the Midianites were so hope- 
lessly vile that their tribe were better wiped out, then Moses made 
the slaughter unavailing by not ordering the killing of the female 
children along with the male. As we now know, hereditary traits, 
good and bad, pass equally down the female line and the 32,000 
Midianite maidens so saved were sufficient to contaminate the en- 
tire Hebrew race. Numbers 31:17, 18, 35. 


238 THE ETHICS OF EVOLUTION 


sort of revival that no prophet has yet arisen to preach 
though the salvation of society depends upon it. 

But whether we live according to our lights or not, 
the law is not abrogated. Natural forces continue to 
act, even though we ignore tbem. The word “now” in 
my text means now, not A.D. 26. It was an eternal 
truth that John was enunciating. The ax and the fan 
are perpetually at work, and if we do not pay heed to 
them, so much the worse for us. 

Natural selection is slow, cruel, and cumbrous. We 
can produce new forms of plants and animals better 
and quicker than nature can, as a visit to any exhibit 
of horticulture or animal husbandry will show. That 
is what our intelligence was given us for, that we may 
improve upon the crude methods of nature. 

But while we strive to improve upon them we must 
not forget that we owe to them the development of 
social virtues as well as personal prowess. A species 
may survive and succeed in the struggle for existence 
through the development of cooperation, of maternal 
or paternal care for offspring, of self-sacrifice for. the 
community, of ability to live with another race. It is 
this that has produced the law of the pack, the spirit 
of the herd, the communism of the hive and ant hill, the 
commensalism of marine animals and insects, the home 
life of the nest.° 

The close relation between evolution and religion is 
well brought out by Prof. William Patten, who teaches 
evolution in Dartmouth College: 


8 This side of evolution, too often overlooked, is emphasized in 
Drummond’s Ascent of Man, Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid, and Pat- 
ten’s Grand Strategy of Evolution. 


EVOLUTION HELPS RELIGION 239 


The compelling pragmatic law, which Darwin so clearly 
saw in operation in plant and animal life, and which he 
called ‘Natural Selection,” is the same law that is so clearly 
expressed in biblical teachings, as, for example: 

“And even now the ax is laid unto the roots of the trees: 
therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is 
hewn down and cast into the fire. ... But the root of 
the righteous shall not be moved.” 

Thus science and religion offer the same incentives to 
action and have the same purposes to accomplish; and 
science expresses in her more comprehensive formulas pre- 
cisely what all the great religions of the past and present 
have tried to express in their teachings, but without that 
sure and intimate knowledge of Nature-action which science 
gives us, and which is so essential to the truthfulness and 
sanity of any kind of religion... . 

And so, it seems to me that the study of evolution, as a 
whole, more than anything else, will help to minimize the 
antagonism between religiously minded and scientifically 
minded people, and will help them to work more peacefully 
and happily together. For young and old, for high-brow 
and low-brow, the study of evolution makes life more sig- 
nificant and more beautiful. It justifies their faith and 
fortifies their ideals. It makes God a more immanent 
reality. It helps all of us to understand the purpose of 
life, and how to accomplish it. 

That is why I teach evolution. 


To those who say that a man cannot be an evolution- 
ist and a Christian, we may reply after the manner of 
the man who was asked if he believed in infant bap- 
tism. “Believe in it!” he answered. “Why, of course! 
I’ve seen it.” So we have all seen Christian evolution- 
ists, thousands of them, and their existence cannot be 


240 THE ETHICS OF EVOLUTION 


denied even by those who think they are inconsistent 
and should abandon their religious or scientific beliefs. 

Timid souls who have become alarmed at the idea 
that religion and science are inevitable antagonists 
should be assured by the “Joint Statement upon the 
Relations of Religion and Science” which was drawn 
up in 1923 by Prof. R. A. Millikan, of the California 
Institute of Technology and Nobel prizeman, and reads 
as follows: 


We, the undersigned, deeply regret that in recent con- 
troversies there has been a tendency to present science and 
religion as irreconcilable and antagonistic domains of 
thought, for in fact they meet distinct human needs, and 
in the rounding out of human life they supplement rather 
than displace or oppose each other. 

The purpose of science is to develop, without prejudice 
or preconception of any kind, a knowledge of the facts, the 
laws, and the processes of nature. The even more impor- 
tant task of religion, on the other hand, is to develop the 
consciences, the ideals, and the aspirations of mankind. 
Each of these two activities represents a deep and vital 
function of the soul of man, and both are necessary for the 
life, the progress, and the happiness of the human race. 

It is a sublime conception of God which is furnished by 
science, and one wholly consonant with the highest ideals 
of religion, when it represents Him as revealing Himself 
through countless ages in the development of the earth 
as an abode for man and in the age-long inbreathing of 
life into its constitutent matter, culminating in man with 
his spiritual nature and all his Godlike powers. 


This statement was signed by a number of the fore- 
most scientists, religious leaders, and men of affairs of 


A CONFLICT OF DOGMATISTS 241 


the United States, whose names appear on pages 244- 
461—a representative group of prominent men. 

No one can question either the ability or the sincer- 
ity of such men as these, and since their adhesion to 
the declaration is purely voluntary it is evident that 
they find no essential incompatibility between a per- 
sonal religious faith and a scientific view of the uni- 
verse. The list of signers could be extended indefi- 
nitely; in fact, the statement probably represents in 
general the position of most of the educated and mod- 
erate-minded men of our time and country. 

It is a curious feature of the present situation that 
the laity are more alarmed over the advances of science 
than the clergy. That is, those who know the most 
about theology and who have most at stake in the 
church are most willing to welcome historical criticism 
and scientific research. ‘The real conflict is not be- 
tween science and religion as such, but rather between 
dogmatic and intolerant religionists and scientists on 
the one side and liberal and tolerant religionists and 
scientists on the other side. It is more a difference of 
temperament than of opinion. The effort to fetter 
freedom of investigation or to force thought into fixed 
formulas is equally fatal in science and religion. 

Overmuch fear of heresy indicates lack of faith. 
Scientific men have such absolute confidence in the 
validity of the scientific method that they permit their 
most fundamental principles to be challenged even in 
their own societies. Chemists listen without a shudder 
to destructive attacks upon the immutability of the 
elements and the indivisibility of the atom. The Royal 
Society of London even applauds a speaker who sets an 


242 THE ETHICS OF EVOLUTION 


upstart foreigner like Einstein above Newton, one of its 
earliest and most venerated members. 

The papers have reported a half-dozen cases of pro- 
fessors who have been dismissed from educational in- 
stitutions under ecclesiastical control for teaching evo- 
lution, but there has been no retaliation from those 
whom some call the ‘‘enemies of religion.”’ I have never 
heard of the National Academy of Sciences expelling a 
member because he was suspected of being a Presby- 
terian or of the American Association for the Advance- 
ment of Science blackballing a man because he had 
been baptized. Girard College is the only institution 
that excludes clergymen by charter and I understand 
that the doorkeeper there is not very vigilant in search- 
ing every visitor to see if he has a dogma concealed 
about his person. If we begin to rewrite our textbooks 
in science to suit a single sect, or section of a sect, we 
may soon have Methodist and Baptist zodlogies, Prot- 
estant and Catholic chemistries, Jewish and Christian 
theories of gravitation, as we now have northern and 
southern histories, and proletarian and capitalistic 
economics. 

What I have said here is not for the purpose of ad- 
vocating or explaining evolution, or to show its relation 
to religious thought. There are plenty of books on such 
subjects. But I want to urge Christian thinkers to de- 
vote more attention to this, as well as to other scientific 
theories, in order to determine their theological bear- 
ing and ethical application. Some clergymen denounce 
evolution at sight as a dangerous novelty, which is 
foolish. Others accept it docilely and indifferently, as 
they do Newton’s laws of gravitation or the nebular 


APPLICATIONS OF EVOLUTION 243 


hypothesis—‘‘doubtless it is true since the scientists say 
so, but it is none of my business’”—which is almost 
equally foolish. For, as I have tried to show, it is very 
much their business, although they are not qualified to 
take an active part in its experimental verification and 
development. The doctrine of evolution is capable of 
very pernicious perversions both in theory and in prac- 
tice, as the world has seen. It has been adduced as 
justification of the claim that “Might is right.” The 
“survival of the fittest” has been interpreted as the 
“survival of the fightest.” 

But we may draw from it lessons more consonant 
with Christian ideals and ethics, as Tennyson did in 
the days when Darwinism was young and viewed with 
much aversion: 


The Lord let the house of a brute to the soul of a man, 
And the man said, “Am I your debtor?” 

And the Lord—‘“Not yet: but make it as clean as you can, 
And then I will let you a better.” 


If my body come from brutes, tho’ somewhat finer than 
their own, 
I am heir, and this my kingdom. Shall the royal voice 
be mute? 
No, but if the rebel subject seek to drag me from the throne, 
Hold the scepter, Human Soul, and rule thy province of 
the brute. 


244 THE ETHICS OF EVOLUTION 


SIGNERS OF THE JOINT STATEMENT UPON THE RELATIONS OF 
SCIENCE AND RELIGION 


Religious Leaders 


Dr. John D. Davis, Presbyterian, Professor Old Testament 
Literature, Princeton Theological Seminary. 

Bishop William Lawrence, Episcopalian, Boston. 

Bishop William Thomas Manning, Episcopalian, New York. 

Dr. Henry van Dyke, Presbyterian, preacher and poet, 
Princeton, N. J. 

Dr. James I. Vance, Presbyterian, First Presbyterian 
Church, Nashville, Tenn. 

President Clarence A. Barbour, Baptist, Rochester Theo- 
logical Seminary. 

President Ernest D. Burton, Baptist, University of Chi- 
cago. 

President Henry Churchill King, Congregationalist, Ober- 
lin Coliege. 

Dr. Robert E. Brown, Congregationalist, Second Congre- 
gational Church, Waterbury, Conn. 

Bishop Francis John McConnell, Methodist, Pittsburgh, 
Pat 

Dr. Peter Ainslie, Disciple, Christian Temple, Baltimore, 
Md. 

President William Louis Poteat, Baptist, Wake Forest Col- 
lege, N. ‘Car, 

Bishop Joseph H. Johnson, Episcopalian, Los Angeles, 
Calif. 

President James Gore King McClure, Presbyterian, Mc- 
Cormick Theological Seminary, Chicago. 

Dr. Merle N. Smith, Methodist, First Methodist Church, 
Pasadena, California. 

Dr. Herbert L. Willett, Disciple, Theologian, Associate 
Editor Christian Century, Chicago. 


Scientists 


Charles D. Walcott, geologist, President of the National 
Academy of Sciences, President of the American Associa- 
tion for the Advancement of Science, and Head of the 
Smithsonian Institution of Washington. 


WHAT SCIENTISTS SAY 245 


Henry Fairfield Osborn, paleontologist, President of the 
American Museum of Natural History, New York. 

Edwin Grant Conklin, zoologist, Head of the Department 
of Zoology, Princeton University. 

James Rowland Angell, psychologist, President of Yale 
University. 

John Merle Coulter, Head of the Department of Botany, 
University of Chicago. 

Michael I. Pupin, physicist and engineer, Professor of 
Electro-mechanics, Columbia University. 

William James Mayo, surgeon, Mayo Foundation for 
Medical Education and Research, Rochester, Minn. 

George David Birkhoff, Head of the Department of 
Mathematics, Harvard University. 

Arthur A. Noyes, chemist, Director of the Gates Chemical 
Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, 
Calif. 

William Wallace Campbell, astronomer, Director of Lick 
Observatory and President of the University of California. 

John J. Carty, engineer, Vice-President in Charge of 
Research, American Telephone and Telegraph Company, 
New York. 

Robert A. Millikan, physicist, Director of Norman Bridge 
Laboratory of Physics, Pasadena, Calif. 

William Henry Welch, pathologist, Director of the School 
of Hygiene and Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, 
Baltimore. 

John C. Merriam, paleontologist, President of the Carnegie 
Institution, Washington, D.C. 

Gano Dunn, engineer, Chairman of the National Research 
Council, Washington, D.C. 


Men of Affairs 


William Allen White, editor, Emporia Gazette, Emporia, 
Kans, 

Herbert Hoover, Secretary of Commerce, Washington. 

James John Davis, Secretary of Labor, Washington, D.C. 

David F. Houston, ex-Secretary of the Treasury, New 
York. 

Frank O. Lowden, ex-Governor of Illinois, Oregon, IIl. 

John Sharp Williams, ex-United States Senator, Yazoo 
City, Miss, 


246 THE ETHICS OF EVOLUTION 


Rear Admiral William S. Sims, Commander United States 
Naval Forces in European waters during the World War, 
Newport, R.I. 

Harry Bates Thayer, President, American Telephone and 
Telegraph Co., New York. 

Julius Kruttschnitt, Chairman of the Executive Commit- 
tee, Southern Pacific Railway, New York. 

Frank Vanderlip, ex-President National City Bank of 
New York, Scarborough, N.Y. 

Henry S. Pritchett, President Carnegie Foundation for 
Advancement of Teaching, New York. | 

Victor F. Lawson, publisher, Chicago Daily News, Chi- 


cago. | 

John G. Shedd, ex-President Marshall Field & Co., Chi- 
cago. 

Elihu Root, ex-Secretary of State, New York. 


A SERMON WITHOUT TEXT, OR MORAL 


THERE are a great many things about the ministry 
that puzzle a layman. One is the very small amount 
of the Bible which is utilized for homiletic purposes. 
It might be supposed that in listening to sermons at the 
rate of a hundred a year a man would in the course of a 
lifetime hear the most of the available portion of the 
Bible treated didactically; but this is not the case. In 
reading the Bible one is always striking verses which 
seem to him, in his unprofessional ignorance, well 
adapted for texts but which he cannot recall having 
heard sermons upon, and he wishes his minister would 
put a slot-box in the vestry into which the congregation 
could drop the texts they want to hear discussed. 

For example, a great deal of attention is now being 
paid to questions of political economy in the pulpit, so 
much that if all we knew of the Bible was what we 
get from some of our modern preachers we would sup- 
pose it to be purely a treatise on that subject; yet there 
is one excellent text for sermons of this class which 
seems to be neglected. I allude to the last clause of 
the fourteenth verse of the third chapter of the Gospel 
of Luke, “Be content with your wages.” 

We all know the occasion for the admonition. The 
Roman soldiers did a great deal for civilization. They 
were the cement which held together the most stable 
and extensive of the ancient empires. They maintained 


order among a hundred nations and enforced peace for 
247 


248 A SERMON WITHOUT TEXT OR MORAL 


the first time on rival sects and castes. They gave a 
new meaning to the conception of law. They estab- 
lished some degree of justice where the caprice of 
despots had been the only power. But “single men 
in barracks don’t grow to plaster saints.” They had 
their faults and John kodaked them as accurately as 
he did the Pharisees, the publicans and the multitude. 
They did, as he said, sometimes take advantage of their 
position of public police to accuse men falsely, they 
were often brutal and rough in their treatment of the 
subject populace and they were given to striking for 
higher wages. 

What strikers they were, when you think of it! They 
struck for less work and more holidays; they struck for 
more spoils of war and less weight to carry. They 
struck because the weather was too hot and they struck 
because the water was too cold. They struck when- 
ever a popular leader was removed, and if no other 
excuse presented itself they struck for recognition of 
the legion. And when new legions were formed with 
recruits from the recently annexed portions of the 
empire they struck against the admissions of “barbar- 
ians,” a word that meant the same as “‘scabs” does now. 
In every great emergency, in any crisis when it was 
particularly necessary that all classes should work to- 
gether for the common good, the legions could be de- 
pended upon to strike for higher wages. The election 
of an emperor was their great chance, and finally it 
came to be recognized that the man who promised most 
to the soldiers would be emperor. Politicians catered 
to the legion vote. That is why Rome fell. There 
are fifty-six other reasons why Rome fell, for which 


i 


UNPOPULAR GOSPEL 249 


see commencement orations, but they are for use with 
other subjects. 

Some possible reasons occur to me why ministers do 
not preach from the text “Be content with your wages.” 
One is that it may not be applicable to the present time. 
If so, it is a good reason. Preachers no longer use the 
biblical denunciations against the worship of graven 
images and ceremonial pollutions because these are not 
modern vices. It may be that there are now no people 
discontented with their wages, that all employers pay 
as much as they can afford, that every employee realizes 
that he is getting as much as he deserves and that the 
world has become so far Christianized that we can 
delight to see others prosper more than ourselves. It 
may be that there is now no class which strives to 
advance its private interests regardless of the incon- 
venience and injury to the public that may come from 
the means they employ. If, then, there are none who 
attempt to get better wages by violence or false accusa- 
tion, the clergy are right in treating the text as obsolete. 

There is another possible explanation why this text 
is not used—and I must confess that this is not original 
but was suggested to me by a minister. I really never 
should have thought of it myself. It is that preaching 
from such texts would “alienate the masses.” This is 
certainly a great objection. In fact it is insuperable. 
It has always been the great obstacle to the spread of 
Christianity that preaching the gospel has a tendency 
to “alienate the masses.” It is perhaps not too much to 
say that if it had not been for this all the world would 
have been Christian long ago. It must be extremely 
difficult for a pastor of a mixed congregation to preach 


250 A SERMON WITHOUT TEXT OR MORAL 


“the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” 
and not “alienate” somebody. I do not see how he can 
do it. And the masses, above all. There are only a 
few preachers who have millionaires in their congrega- 
tions, so rich men are fair game. You can learn all 
about their vices in the newspapers and there are lots 
of good texts in the Bible to use against rich men, more 
than any preacher can use up in a lifetime; but if he 
alienated the masses the church would be empty and his 
sphere of usefulness curtailed. I see that. 

Perhaps John thought that their wages were high 
enough. But their regular pay was only about ten cents 
a day and often they did not get that because of graft 
by the men higher up. It would be unwise to establish 
this as the maximum wage on scriptural authority. 

Another reason why this text is not used may be that 
it is not considered inspired. But the most critical of 
my commentators does not question it and the most 
modern of my translators does not alter the sense of 
the passage. It was spoken by the greatest prophet 
ever born of woman, but that would not prevent its 
being rejected by the highest critics. The “higher 
critics” are those who throw out any passage which 
they do not understand; the “highest critics” are those 
who deny the inspiration of anything they do not like. 
It is an easier method than that of the higher criticism, 
does not require so much scholarship, and it is more 
successful. It is really the only way to get a Bible 
which is perfectly satisfactory to oneself and the con- 
gregation. Inspiration is of course not confined to the 
past. We are all of us infallible, more or less, and 
“they didn’t know everything down in Judee.” Some 


a ee ee ee 


IS DISCONTENT A DUTY? 251 


ministers go so far as to preach the virtue of “divine 
discontent.” Discontent does seem a queer attribute 
for the Deity, but probably it is all right. Only if con- 
tentment is no longer one of the Christian virtues, let 
us know it at once and we will stop our feeble and pain- 
ful efforts to cultivate it. 


EACH IN HIS OWN TONGUE 


Unless, in using the gift of “tongues” you utter intelligible words, 
how can what you say be understood? You will be speaking to the 
winds! There is, for instance, a certain number of different lan- 
guages in the world, and not one of them fails to convey meaning. 
If, however, 1 do not happen to know the language, I shall be a 
foreigner to those who speak it, and they will be foreigners to 
me,... Therefore let him who, when speaking, uses the gift of 
“tongues” pray for ability to interpret them—1 Corinthians 14: 9-11, 
13 (Twentieth Century Version). 


Not long ago I had to change trains at a junction 
and found that I had run out of reading matter for 
the long journey before me. There were only five min- 
utes between trains and I had no time to choose accord- 
ing to my taste. So I decided to take as my guide the 
voice of the people, and making a dash at the news- 
stand I asked the dealer: “‘Where is your shelf of best 
sellers?” He pointed to a row of new books and there 
I saw among the detective stories and jazz novels three 
books of another sort: Papini’s Life of Christ, Van 
Loon’s Story of the Bible, and Goodspeed’s modern 
English version of the New Testament. 

Now what was there in common between the brilliant 
and uncritical picture of Christ by an Italian ex-atheist, 
the colloquial and modernistic narration of biblical 
stories by an American journalist, and the scholarly 
and literal translation of a theological professor that 
should place these three rather expensive volumes 


among the best sellers of the day? Simply that all 
202 


UNDERSTANDED OF THE PEOPLE = 253 


three were in their several ways fresh and unconven- 
tional presentations of the Bible. Their popularity 
showed that the people of today will read the Scriptures 
if they are translated into the language of today. The 
Bible is perpetually among the best sellers but only 
when it is put into a new and modern form does it at- 
tract the attention of the general reader. 

There are two classes of people who will be benefited 
by a modern English translation of the Bible: those 
who are familiar with the present version and those who 
are not. As we cease to hear the ticking of a clock 
after listening a while, so those who have heard, read, 
or memorized portions of the Scriptures every day since 
babyhood, and always in the same words, have lost the 
power of perceiving their deep and vivid meaning. On 
the other hand, to those who have not been so trained 
the biblical language seems strange, quaint, and af- 
fected, and it is difficult to persuade them that anything 
which sounds so foreign and antiquated can be of prac- 
tical value to them. 

To older Christians any change in the phrases which 
have been their comfort in sorrow and the expression 
of their deepest emotion gives a shock like the singing 
of a hymn to an unaccustomed tune, but a new genera- 
tion is continually coming on, and it is a question 
whether we shall train them in an acquired taste for 
the ancient phraseology and so fix a gulf between their 
religious and their daily life or give them the Gospel in 
their own language. We do not nowadays need so 
much a greater attachment and reverence for estab- 
lished words and forms as we do a fresh presentation 
of the message of God to the modern world. There is 


254 EACH IN HIS OWN TONGUE 


not such a change in the English of the last three hun- 
dred years as to make any considerable portion of our 
Bible absolutely unintelligible to the ordinary reader. 
There are not many passages in the Authorized Ver- 
sion which seriously distort the sense, and with the 
abundance of dictionaries, no one need be misled by 
these. But tone and style are just as important factors 
in a translation as verbal accuracy, and in this respect 
the Revised Version is no improvement over the old. 
The chief fault with the Authorized Version was not 
that it was inaccurate, but that it was antiquated, and 
the Revised Version is much the same. 

Difficult as the art of translating is, its aim is very 
simple. It is, to produce on the readers of another 
language the same impression as was produced on the 
readers of the original. The Bible as a message to our 
own times is of greater importance than it is as an 
English classic. Paul did not write in the Greek of 
Homer, and we should not translate him in the English 
of Shakespeare. Paul’s Greek was to his contem- 
poraries about what good newspaper English is to us. 
It is brisk, everyday language; not overburdened by 
grammatical scrupulosity; not in the least quaint, 
archaic, or affected. Doubtless some of Paul’s vigor- 
ous and unconventional phrases borrowed from the 
shops, the barracks, and the prize ring shocked the 
literary sensibilities of the précieuses of Corinth. 

What is wanted in any translation of an ancient 
work, as also in a historical novel, is not the effect of 
antiquity, but of contemporaneity. The object of read- 
ing such a work is to be transported back to the age 
which it depicts, and any affectation of the archaic de- 


ANTIQUE FINISH 255 


stroys the illusion, because no age appears antiquated 
or peculiar to itself. To publish nowadays a new or a 
revised version in the language of King James is mor- 
ally and esthetically allied to the practice of filling the 
grain of oak furniture with lampblack to give an “an- 
tique finish.”’ It is like translating a German novel into 
broken English to give it a foreign flavor. 

A large part of a Dictionary of the Bible is taken 
up with explaining the meaning of the English words 
used in our common version—that is, in translating 
the translation. This is a very valuable feature of the 
dictionary—the pity of it is that something essentially 
so unnecessary should be so much needed. A new 
translation has the further advantage of getting rid of 
theological phraseology. Every word in the Authorized 
Version is weighted down with a pile of scholastic 
tomes. We are forced to read the gospel message 
through spectacles dim with the mists of eighteen cen- 
turies of commentation and controversy. This is like 
the practice that used to prevail in the schools of study- 
ing Greek from Latin textbooks. 

But we need not discuss the question whether seven- 
teenth-century English represents ancient Greek bet- 
ter than does twentieth-century English. The use of 
the second person singular and of obsolete words and 
idioms may give an agreeable literary flavor to the 
educated taste, but that does not decide the matter. 
What we want to know is whether the average man, 
woman, and child will get by using them a fresher and 
more vivid realization of the meaning of the message 
of the Bible to them. We are not obliged to decide from 
theoretical grounds alone, for the experiment is easily 


256 EACH IN HIS OWN TONGUE 


tried. There are several translations of the New Testa- 
ment in modern English on the market; I have seen 
them tested under widely different circumstances, and 
they were always received with a hearty welcome and 
no opposition. Students at the university, prisoners in 
the penitentiary, and the ordinary church congrega- 
tions are alike more interested and impressed than when 
the ordinary version is used. It is a strange sight to 
look down from the pulpit and see the congregation 
really listening to the customary reading of the lesson. 
But most marked of all are the results of its use with 
the young people’s societies. To have boys and girls 
beg the leader to read longer to them in the New Testa- 
ment, to have them borrow it from each other, and sit 
up nights to read it through like the latest novel, is suffi- 
ciently unusual to merit attention. 

The more new translations the better. The im- 
portant thing is to keep any one of them from becoming 
“authorized.” In the multiplicity of sects there is a 
chance for the true Christianity to develop. In the 
multiplicity of versions there is a chance for freedom 
from the bondage to the letter. When each scholar in 
the Bible class has a different version there will not be 
so many hours wasted in quibbling over the technical 
meaning of some English words. They will be obliged 
to study the thought. Many persons who do not read 
the original tongues find it advantageous to read the 
Bible in French or German, not because these versions 
are better than ours, though they are because less anti- 
quated, but because they get a better insight into the 
meaning through the unaccustomed words. 

Paul’s letters in particular show a gain in vividness 


A DRIVE FOR THE FUND 257 


and modernity, as the following passage from the 
Twentieth Century New Testament will show: 


I wish you would tolerate a little folly in me!—as indeed 
you really do. I am jealous over you with a jealousy like 
the jealousy of God. I gave you in marriage to one hus- 
band, that I might bring into the Christ’s presence a pure 
bride. Yet J fear that it may turn out that, just as the 
Serpent by his craftiness deceived Eve, so your minds may 
have lost the loyalty and purity due from you to the Christ. 
For if some newcomer is proclaiming a Jesus other than the 
one whom we proclaimed, or if you are receiving a Spirit 
different from the one which you did receive, or a Good 
News different from that which you welcomed, then you are 
marvelously tolerant! I do not reckon myself in any way 
inferior to the most eminent apostles! Though I am not a 
trained orator, yet I am not deficient in knowledge; indeed, 
we made this perfectly plain to you in everything. 

With reference, indeed, to the Fund for your fellow- 
Christians, it is really superfluous for me to say anything 
to you. I know, of course, of your willingness to help, 
and am always boasting of it, when speaking about you to 
the Macedonians. I tell them that you in Greece have 
been ready for a year past. It was really your zeal that 
stimulated most of them. My reason for sending our 
Brothers is to prevent what we said about you proving in 
this particular matter an empty boast, and to enable you 
to be as well prepared as I have been saying you are. 
Otherwise, if any Macedonians were to come with me and 
find you unprepared, we-—to say nothing of you—should 
feel ashamed of our present confidence. 


A living faith must be expressed in living language. 
The chief foe of vital religion is antiquarianism. An 


258 EACH IN HIS OWN TONGUE 


old and neglected city becomes buried under the accu- 
mulated débris of the passing years. In the course of 
time it becomes hidden from view and forgotten, al- 
though there may still linger about the site some dim 
tradition of its historic greatness. But when the skilled 
archeologist excavates the mound, carefully removing 
the encumbering dirt layer by layer, and religiously re- 
storing the buildings and preserving the utensils of 
daily life, there stands revealed to us the original city, 
not as a ruin and a relic, but as the abode of life; and 
for the first time we get a feeling of kinship and under- 
standing for the ancient people who once trod its 
streets and worshiped in its temples, who met the same 
temptations and struggled with the same sins as we. 

So it is with an old book which through neglect or 
misplaced reverence has become encumbered and ob- 
scured by the accumulation of obsolete expressions. It, 
too, has to be dug out and restored before it can seem 
real and lifelike to us again, before we can see it as it 
was in the beginning. For many books this does not 
matter. Let them get dusty and moldy as they will. 
Once in a long while we will take down the venerable 
volume from the shelf and spend a few minutes turn- 
ing over its yellow pages. We find a certain pleasure in 
puzzling out the meaning from its antiquated spelling 
and strange phraseology. We are amused at recogniz- 
ing familiar thoughts disguised in these ‘‘olde cloathes,” 
but we may be sure that this was not the impression 
that the author intended to convey. The vellum volume 
contains perhaps the pamphlets of some pugnacious 
politician or the sermons of a protesting divine, a mod- 
ernist of the modernists of his time, and he would rather 


THE GOSPEL OF KING JAMES 259 


never be read at all than be regarded as a quaint relic 
of antiquity. It really is not treating him fairly to 
read him in this spirit, and he has the right to resent 
it. 

The books that most need translation are those sev- 
eral centuries old in what is nominally our own lan- 
guage but which is really quite different. The words 
seem the same and the modern reader assumes that they 
mean to him what they meant to contemporaries, 
whereas many of them have suffered a subtle alteration 
in essence or in atmosphere through the lapse of time. 
If a man does not know a word of Greek he does not 
venture to interpret the meaning of a passage in the 
Greek classics. But when he reads the authorized ver- 
sion of the Bible he may be unconsciously misled as to 
the meaning of the language, and he may stake his 
soul’s salvation or may condemn a brother as a heretic, 
on the basis of a single text of which he no more under- 
stands the meaning than he does of the original Greek 
or Hebrew. 

Only experts in Elizabethan English can understand 
Shakespeare, and they do not agree about it. The 
Variorum edition devotes pages to the interpretation by 
different commentators of a single word, and often in 
the end they give it up as incomprehensible. Such 
critical speculations form an interesting intellectual 
exercise, but it really does not matter after all what 
Shakespeare meant by any obscure word or passage. 
Nobody holds Shakespeare to be divinely inspired in 
the theological sense, and nobody takes the plays as an 
infallible rule of faith and practice, so the reader is 
none the worse if he has misconstrued a phrase or two. 


260 EACH IN HIS OWN TONGUE 


For instance, Shakespearean scholars tell us that the 
common quotation, “Conscience does make cowards of 
us all,” does not mean what it is commonly quoted to 
mean. But who cares? It’s a handy quotation any- 
how, whatever the author may have meant by it. So 
too Biblical scholars tell us that the oft cited saying of 
Job: 


For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall 
stand at the latter day upon the earth. 

And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet 
in my flesh shall I see God, 


should rather be read in this way: 


“Still, I know One to champion me at last, to stand up 
for me upon earth, 

This body may break up, but even then my life shall have 
a sight of God,” ? 


or this: 


“But as for me I know that my Vindicator liveth, 
And at last He will stand up upon the earth: 
And after my skin, even this body, is destroyed, 
Then without my flesh shall I see God.” ? 


This remains an inspiring and inspired passage, how- 
ever it may be worded, but obviously it is not right to 
use it as a “proof-text’”’ for three such serious dogmas 
as the redemptive function of Christ, the resurrection 


1 Moffatt’s translation. 
2 Aked’s The Divine Drama of Job. 


LIVING CLASSICS 261 


of the body, and second advent. The only cure for the 
literalism and verbalism which strangles the life out 
of religion is the multiplicity of versions. ‘For the 
letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” 

The classicists are beginning to realize the value of 
real translations that carry the spirit as well as the sense 
of the original. Many such have recently appeared that 
enable those of us who neglected the ancient languages 
in our youth to see for the first time something of what 
our classical friends are so enthusiastic about. The 
Loeb Library has opened up a new world to me, the 
world of Greek and Roman life. I have read most of 
the volumes halfway through, for I read them with 
eyes to the right. In this series as a rule the colloquial 
passages are rendered into colloquial English with little 
affectation of the archaic. I have all my life been a 
devoted reader, however delinquent a follower, of 
Marcus Aurelius as revealed in his Meditations. But I 
got better acquainted with the man himself when I read 
his letters to his teacher, Fronto, and found that he was 
not afraid to use slang and puns on occasion. For 
instance, 


In future be chary of telling so many fibs, especially in 
the Senate, about me. This speech of yours is awfully ° 
well written. Oh, if I could only kiss your head for every 
heading of it! You have absolutely put every one else in 
the background. 


This reads like one of Roosevelt’s letters to Lodge, and 
it should. 


8 Horribiliter. 


262 EACH IN HIS OWN TONGUE 


The worst enemies of the Bible are those who regard 
it as “mere literature.” They hold the King James 
version sacred because they have ceased to hold the 
original sacred. I clip a typical comment from a cur- 
rent editorial: 


It is as ridiculous to translate the King James version 
into colloquial English as it would be to play the same 
trick with Hamlet or with Milton’s Areopagitica. The 
authorized Bible as it now stands is a piece of unexcelled 
literary workmanship. Leaving out of consideration alto- 
gether its religious import it has the charm of a magnificent 
style, which should not be tampered with. 


“Leaving out of consideration altogether its religious 
import”—exactly, that is just what such people do. 
The editor is so ignorant of what he was writing about 
that he does not know that the King James version was 
written in colloquial English and that the New Testa- 
ment was written in colloquial Greek. He thinks it was 
written in blank verse like Hamlet or in stately Latin- 
ized prose like the Areopagitica, which in itself shows 
how misleading the King James version has become. 

As a matter of fact our Authorized Version dates 
rather from 1535 than 1611, for “‘it is not too much to 
say that William Tyndale wrote nine-tenths of the King 
James New Testament.” * And what Tyndale intended 
to we can best learn from his own words in reply to one 
of his opponents: “If God spare my lyfe, ere many 
years I wyl cause a boye that dryveth the plough shall 


know more of the scripture than thou dost.”’ He says 


4 Goodspeed’s The Making of the English New Testament, p. 51. 


THE PLOWBOY’S BIBLE 263 


that he “perceaved by experyence how that it was im- 
possible to stablysh the laye people in any truth, 
excepte the scripture were playnly layde before their 
eyes in their mother tongue’”—“‘which thinge onlye,” 
he adds, “moved me to translate the New Testament.” ° 

Tyndale was a learned man, M.A. of Oxford and P.G. 
of Cambridge, and he could have written in the style of 
Euphues if he had wanted to, but he deliberately re- 
jected all pedantry and affectation in order that he 
might lay the Scriptures before the eyes of the lay 
people in their mother tongue. Luther had the same 
aim, and when he was translating the Bible into German 
he went down into the market place so that he might 
catch the racy vernacular of the day. The result was 
that these versions became the literary masterpieces 
and models of the English and German languages. 

Of course Tyndale’s translation met with heated op- 
position, as does every effort to bring the Bible to the 
people. But even today I doubt if any of the opponents 
of contemporary versions can handle the vocabulary of 
abuse with such splendid vigor as did Cochleus in 
attacking Tyndale: 


The New Testament translated into the vulgar tongue is 
in truth the food of death, the fuel of sin, the veil of malice, 
the pretext of false liberty, the protection of disobedience, 
the corruption of discipline, the depravity of morals, the 
termination of concord, the death of honesty, the well- 
spring of vices, the disease of virtues, the instigation of 
rebellion, the milk of pride, the nourishment of contempt, 


5 Goodspeed, p. 4. If we really want the antiquated flavor we 
must preserve the original spelling. 


264 EACH IN HIS OWN TONGUE 


the death of peace, the destruction of charity, the enemy 
of unity, the murderer of truth.® 


And the funny thing about it is that the version that 
Cochleus was fighting for, the Vulgate, was itself a 
translation into the vulgar tongue, Latin, and when 
Jerome produced it in the fourth century “it was ve- 
hemently attacked as an unwarrantable innovation, 
even by a man like Augustine.” Intolerance and con- 
servatism are the same in all ages. It is a reaction that 
can always be relied upon, whatever else changes. Not 
many years ago, when an attempt was made to trans- 
late the New Testament into modern Greek, a riot was 
precipitated in Athens, in which people were killed. 

In India, during the Sena dynasty of the eleventh 
century, the Buddhists, who were the heretics of that 
age, introduced the vernacular into religion, but the 
Brahmans opposed it with this ringing declaration: 


Who hears the eighteen Puranas or the Ramayana in 
Bengali will be thrown into the hell called Rourava. 


I do not know what are the heating facilities of the hell 
called Rourava, but I presume it is not hot enough to 
satisfy our present-day Brahmans who adhere to the 
King James version on the ground that “the language 
Paul and Moses spoke is good enough for me.” 

The need for new versions is apparent when we learn 
that the Greek text that Tyndale translated was that 
compiled by Erasmus in 1516 from five fragmentary 
manuscripts of the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries. 


6 Goodspeed, p. 8. 


THE TWO-HORNED UNICORN 265 


Now scholars have at their disposal 150 manuscripts 
dating from the third to the ninth centuries. As Pro- 
fessor Goodspeed says: “We now possess a Greek 
Testament under every word of which there goes down 
a foundation of manuscript evidence fifteen hundred 
years deep into the past.” More than that, we know 
for the first time the language of the New Testament, 
for the recent discovery in Egypt of a mass of Greek 
letters on papyrus proves that it was written in the ver- 
nacular of the time, which was very different from the 
literary style.‘ 

The British scholars who spent ten years, 1870-80, in 
revising the New Testament adopted as their first 
principle “to introduce as few alterations as possible 
into the text of the Authorized Version consistently with 
faithfulness.” The American revisers who published 
their version in 1901 were less conservative but still 
regarded it as “no part of our task to modernize the 
diction of the Bible.” Yet they cleared up many ob- 
scure and misleading passages that had perplexed the 
devout and alienated the skeptical. Two mythical 
monsters were removed from the zodlogy of the Old 
Testament. The dragons that howled in waste places 
are converted into jackals, and the unicorns into wild 
oxen. The two-horned unicorn * involved a verbal con- 
tradiction that strained the faith of the literalist who 
held to the infallibility of the Authorized Version. Pas- 
sages like Jeremiah 4 :19 and Lamentations 1 :20 were, 


7 For a popular account of the discovery of the letters of the time 
of Christ, showing that the Epistles and Gospels were written in 
the vulgar tongue, see Saturday Evening Post, May 30, 1925. 

8 Of Deuteronomy 33:17. 


266 EACH IN HIS OWN TONGUE 


as the American revisers say, “both unpleasant and in- 
correct.” 

With the question of biblical phraseology is involved 
that of the language of prayer. To speak the English of 
the seventeenth century as fluently and as carelessly as 
one’s mother tongue requires constant training from 
childhood. Every one who has had experience with the 
devotional services of young people knows that one 
reason why it is so hard to induce them to offer public 
prayer is that they-must speak in what is practically a 
foreign tongue. They have never used the second 
person singular, and they often blunder in trying to 
convert a modern verb into the ancient form, exciting 
the risibilities of the frivolous and experiencing 
a feeling of embarrassment quite out of propor- 
tion to the insignificance of the mistake. They 
are only safe when using the familiar language of the 
Bible, so the ordinary public prayer consists largely 
of a more or less skillful collocation of Scriptural 
phrases representing very imperfectly the real feelings 
and aspirations of the speaker. The only advantage 
which extemporary prayer has over written is thus 
sacrificed, and what should be the simplest and most 
spontaneous expression of heartfelt emotions becomes a 
troublesome literary exercise. It would be interesting 
to know how many people in private prayer adopt these 
forms and how many use their natural language. My 
own opinion is that many Christians in their most 
earnest private devotions drop all obsolete idioms and 
grammatical constructions. If that is so, there would 
seem to be no good reason for assuming them in public, 
for there is no ground for thinking that the Lord takes 


THOU OR YOU 267 


special delight in an address couched in antiquated 
phraseology. 

Many evangelistic and Salvation Army songs mix 
“thee” and “you” in the same sentence in a way which 
is very amusing from a literary standpoint but, con- 
sidered further, is encouraging, as it shows the struggles 
of common sense breaking through conventionality, and 
proves that living religion cannot be forever bound in 
dead ecclesiastical forms. Let us have confidence in 
our own religious feelings and in the possibility of ex- 
pressing them in our own language. Let us believe in 
ourselves and in the twentieth century. Suppose you 
associated the word “ghost” only with a degrading 
superstition. How would the phrase ‘Holy Ghost” 
strike you? If your only idea of a king was something 
akin to slavery, or polygamy, or feudalism, something 
to be hated and overthrown, how would the monarchical 
phraseology of the church impress you? What would 
you think of a man who used “thou,” and “thee” and 
“ve,” and could give no reason for doing so except that 
it was done in 1611? In reading the Bible, would you 
not be frequently like the Ethiopian eunuch, “reading 
without understanding’’? 

The custom of reading passages of Scripture in 
schools is a good one for literary and religious reasons, 
but for both reasons it is a serious mistake to prescribe 
the use of the King James version alone when there are 
more truthful versions to be had. Various versions 
should be used in turn, or together, so the students may 
turn their attention to the meaning and not fall into 
the superstition of believing that there is something 
magical in the repetition of certain archaic words and 


268 EACH IN HIS OWN TONGUE 


phrases. How would a professor of chemistry or biol- 
ogy like it if he were required to use a seventeenth 
century textbook? 

Oliver Wendell Holmes warns us of the danger of 
“polarized” words, that is, language that has become so 
familiar and fixed that it has lost its meaning and vivid- 
ness: 


Time only can gradually wean us from our Epeolatry, or 
word-worship, by spiritualizing our ideas of the thing sig- 
nified. Man is an idolater, or symbol-worshiper, by na- 
ture, which of course is no fault of his; but sooner or later 
all his local and temporary symbols must be ground to 
powder, like the golden calf,—word-images as well as 
metal and wooden ones. Rough work, iconoclasm, but the 
only way to get at truth. 

Skepticism is afraid to trust in depolarized words and 
so cries out against a new translation. I think, myself, if 
every idea our Book contains could be shelled out of its 
old symbol and put into a new, clean, unmagnetic word, 
we should have some chance at reading it as philosophers, 
or wisdom-lovers, ought to read it—When society has once 
fairly dissolved the New Testament, which it has never 
done yet, it will perhaps crystallize it over again in new 
forms of language.® 


The primary purpose of the Protestant Reformation 
was to put the Bible into the language of the common 
people, but modern Protestants have so far forgotten 
the fundamental principle of their faith that they are 
content to hear from the pupit an antiquated and inac- 
curate version of the Holy Scriptures. The pastor pur- 


9 The Professor at the Breakfast Table. 


THE TEST OF THE CHRISTIAN 269 


ports to be reading the veritable revelation of God yet 
knows in reading certain passages that the words do 
not mean what they seem to mean, and the congregation 
does not know what they mean at all. 

All who value the truth above tradition, all who be- 
lieve that the Bible is something more than mere litera- 
ture, all who believe that the Bible has a message for 
the world today which should be delivered directly and 
correctly—in other words, all sincere Christians—will 
prefer a modern version. All who worship words and 
care not for their meaning, all whose religion consists 
in verbal vesture, all who fear that the Bible will lose 
its sanctity if presented in plain English, all who fear 
that if the Bible is made readable it will be read and so 
make religion a vital factor in modern life, all who hold 
that the King James version is inerrant and gives the 
literal language of the prophets and saints, all such will 
naturally oppose the introduction of any new transla- 
tion. 

Religion of all things can least afford to be tainted 
with antiquity. The greatest danger today is that our 
young people, more impatient with the past than any 
previous generation, shall look upon religion as some- 
thing out of date with which they have no concern. If 
religion is too closely identified with Palestine it will be 
regarded as foreign to young Americans, except those 
whose home land is the Promised Land. The God of 
the churches is associated in the minds of modern 
youth with mummies and cuneiform inscriptions, 
rather than with the printing press and radio. ‘There 
is some excuse for the good old Methodist lady who 
started in to learn Hebrew. When asked why, she re- 


270 EACH IN HIS OWN TONGUE 


plied that she must die before many years, and she 
wanted to be able to talk to God in his own language 
when she got to heaven. 

We must not allow religion to be buried under a heap 
of archeological rubbish like the cities of Mesopotamia 
and Egypt. The Lord is no antiquary. He is a God of 
the twentieth century, more at home, we believe, in our 
modern world than in any previous age, though we 
hope that the twenty-first will be still better fitted for 
His habitation. 

It were blasphemous to suppose that the truths of 
religion would lose by translation into modern English. 
Many a man, however, has been condemned as heretic 
for expressing an old truth ina new form. I once heard 
a devout woman criticize her pastor as irreverent, and 
when I asked her how, she said: ‘‘He talks about Abra- 
ham, Isaac, and Jacob as though they were real per- 
sons.” 

What the world needs is the reincarnation of the 
Eternal Word in the living words of today. 


REFERENCES TO MopeRN ENGLISH VERSIONS 


If, as I hope, these remarks may have inclined some to 
see for themselves if religion will survive translation into 
our vernacular, it may be of interest to append the titles of 
such modern versions as I am familiar with. I have pur- 
posely quoted from various versions in preparing this volume 
in order that the reader may sample several. No one who 
did not know Italian would think of making a serious study 
of Dante without consulting all the different translations 
available, and it is quite as important to learn exactly what 
the biblical writers said about Inferno and Paradise. 


MODERN ENGLISH VERSIONS 271 


The New Testament: An American Translation. By Edgar 
J. Goodspeed, Professor of Biblical and Patristic Greek 
in the University of Chicago, Chicago. The University 
of Chicago Press. 

This is the latest and probably the best for American 
readers. 

The Making of the English New Testament. By Egdar J. 
Goodspeed, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 

This is not a translation but a book about translations, 
giving the reasons for a modern version. 

The Twentieth Ceniury New Testament. New York: Flem- 
ing H. Revell Co. 

It was this book that converted me to modern versions. 
I have used it ever since it first appeared, twenty-five 
years ago, and I know how well it works on young and 
old, learned and unlearned. It is translated by a group 
of twenty British scholars of various denominations. 

The Modern Bible. By the Rev. Frank Schell Ballentine. 
New York: The Lovell Co. 

The first attempt at a modern version translation of the 
Bible, was the publication under this title of little volumes 
of the gospels in 1899 by an Episcopalian clergyman. 

The Modern Speech New Testament. By R. F. Weymouth, 
Boston: The Pilgrim Press. 

The Westminster Version of the Sacred Scriptures: The 
New Testament. Edited by the Rev. Cuthbert Lattey, 
Professor of Sacred Scriptures at St. Beuno’s College, 
North Wales, and the Rev. Joseph Keating, Editor of 
The Month. New York: Longmans, Green and Co. 

A new translation by a group of Jesuit scholars with the 
approval of the Cardinal Archbishop. The English is only 
partially modernized. 


The Old Testament (Vol. 1: Genesis to Esther; Vol. II: Job 
to Malachi) and The New Testament. By the Rev. James 
Moffatt, Professor of Church History, United Free 
Sait College, Glasgow. New York: George H. Doran 

O. 

Here we have for the first time a complete and scholarly 
translation of the whole Bible into modern English. No 
one who believes that the Bible has a message for our 
times and wants to know, so far as can be found out, what 


272 EACH IN HIS OWN TONGUE 


its authors meant should fail to consult it, even though he 
may prefer the familiar language of the old version. 

The Psalms in Modern Speech. By John Edgar McFadyen, 
Professor of the Old Testament, United Free Church Col- 
lege, Glasgow. Boston: The Pilgrim Press. 

The poetical form is maintained by rhythmical language 
and printing as verse. 

The Beginnings of History According to the Jews. By 
Professor Charles P. Fagnani, of Union Theological 
Seminary. New York: Albert & Charles Boni. 

An original and literal translation of the first eleven 
chapters of Genesis. 

Professor J. M. P. Smith with several collaborators is 
preparing a modern English translation of the Old Testa- 
ment that will soon be published by the University of 
Chicago Press. 


WHEN WE WERE HEATHEN 
(A Missionary Talk to Young People) 


Five times I have been given one less than forty lashes by the 
Jews. I have been beaten three times by the Romans, I have been 
stoned once, I have been shipwrecked three times, a night and a 
day, I have been adrift at sea; with my frequent journeys, in 
danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own 
people, danger from the heathen, danger in the city, danger in the 
desert, danger at sea, danger from false brothers, through toil and 
hardship, through many a sleepless night, through hunger and 
thirst, often without food, and exposed to cold—II Corinthians 
11:24-27 (Goodspeed’s version). 


PEOPLE often wonder what is the secret of the per- 
sistent opposition to foreign missions; why it is that so 
many otherwise good and intelligent persons object to 
sharing with our brothers in darkness the light that has 
been given to us, especially in consideration of the fact 
that religion, like knowledge, is something that is not 
diminished by dividing it but is multiplied. It is twice 
blessed; it blesseth him that gives and him that takes. 

The fact is, the root of the opposition to foreign mis- 
sions is chiefly natural selfishness. We have a good 
thing and we want to hold on to it. All men are by 
nature monopolists. A poor man suddenly become 
wealthy is likely to be as miserly as a born millionaire. 
If a man has a fine painting, or a woman has a beauti- 
ful dress, it is valued more highly if nobody else has 
one like it. 


It appears that some people think that Christ was 
273 


274 WHEN WE WERE HEATHEN 


born to our race; that he came first to the Nordics and 
afterwards to nobody. Actually of course we owe our 
Christianity to foreign missions in the days when we 
were the foreigners. 

Our religious genealogy is this: Christ came as a 
foreign missionary to the Jews, the Jews came to the 
Romans, the Romans came to the English. The first 
of these missionary enterprises we read about in the 
Gospels; the second we read about in the Acts of the 
Apostles. The third we do not read about at all as a 
rule because it is not in the Bible. But that is a poor 
reason. The history of the Church after the end of 
Acts is also interesting and instructive. Let me tell you 
a story or two from this unread history. 

About the year 586 there lived in Rome a young 
monk named Gregory. He had been born to high rank 
and great wealth, but had laid both aside to serve the 
church. It happened one day that Gregory visited the 
slave market of the city. I say “happened,” but I do 
not think it was altogether by chance, for when he 
became pope he paid great attention to the evils of the 
slave trade, and I presume that it was more from some 
humanitarian motive than from mere idle curiosity that 
he attended the slave sale. 

There he saw every kind of man that the broad em- 
pire of Rome could furnish; representatives of all the 
conquered races, from the Nile to the North Sea, mostly 
black, woolly-headed Africans and brown-skinned Asi- 
atics with straight black hair. But among them there 
happened to be that day three captives of quite unusual 
racial type, with blue eyes, long flaxen hair hanging 
down their backs, and pink and white complexion, a 


THE PRIESTLY PUNSTER 275 


type of physiognomy that has, very curiously, been 
regarded even among brunette peoples as belonging to 
angels. Gregory was so attracted by the strange beauty 
of these youths that he inquired whether they were of 
Christian or of pagan people. 

“Pagan,” replied the Jewish slave dealer. 

“Alas, that beings of such bright faces should be 
slaves of the Prince of Darkness! What is their race?” 

““Angles,”’ was the answer. 

“They look like angels and should have a heavenly 
inheritance,” said Gregory. “From what country do 
they come?” 

“Deira.” 

“Deira. Right, for they shall be rescued de ira 
(from the wrath of God) and receive the mercy of 
Christ. How call you the king of that country?” 

“Ella.” 

“Then must Alleluia be sung in A®lla’s land,” said the 
priestly punster. 

From that day Gregory became a missionary crank. 
In fact he was so fanatical that he started out himself 
a few days later with a few monks to convert Britain; 
but he was so much needed in Rome at the time that 
the people clamored for his recall, and the Pope sent 
horsemen after him. They caught up with him at the 
end of the third day’s journey and found him resting 
under a tree, reading a book and making puns. It was 
his only vice. 

For some twenty years thereafter he was kept busy 
at church work, but he never forgot his intention of con- 
verting the savages of that remote archipelago. In 
596, after he became Pope, he sent word to Gaul that 


276 WHEN WE WERE HEATHEN 


part of the papal revenue should be spent in buying 
Anglo-Saxon slaves of seventeen or eighteen to be 
sent to Rome for education, that they might later 
be made missionaries to their native land. But with- 
out waiting for that he announced his intention of send- 
ing a band of monks to evangelize the English. 

We have no record, so far as I know, of what advice 
his friends gave him when he proposed his unprece- 
dented plan to them, but since human nature is much 
the same in all ages we can easily guess what objections 
were brought forward to dissuade him. 

In the first place, that it was hard times. We should 
be justified in assuming this on general principles, for 
it has always been hard times, ever since Adam was 
evicted from the Garden of Eden, and the times are 
felt to be especially hard whenever a contribution for 
missions is called for. But we do not have to guess 
about it, for we have sufficient knowledge of the state of 
affairs to feel safe in saying that it was just about as 
hard times then and there as it has been anywhere 
and any time in the history of the world. A commercial 
crisis, a political crisis, and a religious crisis were in 
conjunction at that time in the city of Rome. Half the 
people were paupers, supported by public funds. The 
old families had been living on the interest of their debts 
for many years, and now many of them were being kept 
alive by the alms of the church. Gregory himself gave 
food to three thousand poor girls and their parents 
every day. The Campagna around Rome, once so fruit- 
ful, was now a desert. Crops had failed, malaria had 
depopulated the land, and the farms had become cattle 
ranges. The Lombards from the north of Italy were 


HARD TIMES IN OLD ROME 277 


threatening to overwhelm Rome at any time and could 
only be kept off by a combination of force and diplo- 
macy, arms and bribes. Plagues and floods were caus- 
ing horrible devastation. All the money that could be 
raised was needed right here in Rome. 

Gregory himself thus paints the situation in one of 
his sermons: 


Everywhere we see tribulation, everywhere we hear lam- 
entation. The cities are destroyed, the castles torn down, 
the fields laid waste, the land made desolate. Villages are 
empty, few inhabitants remain in the cities, and even these 
poor remnants of humanity are daily being reduced. 


Another argument was that there was work enough 
to do at home. And indeed there was. A great many 
of the Italians even among the churchmen needed con- 
verting as much as any heathen. There was a schism in 
the church, an old heresy and several new ones. John, 
Patriarch of Constantinople, was setting himself to 
be Pope. It was doubtless pointed out to Gregory that 
he was already undertaking more than a dozen men 
could do. He was teaching agriculture to the settlers 
that he had put on the abandoned farms. He was trying 
to reconcile the Arian heresy. He was acting as arbitra- 
tor in the quarrels of the Lombards. He was reforming 
the church music—introducing the Gregorian chants, 
you know—and nothing takes more time, needs more 
tact, and makes more trouble than managing a church 
choir. He was having a hard fight within the church 
to prevent the taking of bribes for ecclesiastical pre- 
ferment. He was trying to abolish the slave trade, an 


278 WHEN WE WERE HEATHEN 


established institution of society for ten thousand years 
or more, and not yet eliminated from the world. And 
here he was proposing to undertake missions in the 
foreign field. No wonder folks thought him foolish. 
It is a well known fact that those who go in for foreign 
missions never do anything for the home church. I 
should say, rather, it is well known but not for that 
reason to be taken for fact. Whether it is a fact or not 
you can find out for yourself by observation in your 
own church. 

But probably the most powerful argument that 
was brought against the new enterprise was that 
the British were savages and incapable of Christianity. 
Doubtless their own religion, crude as it might seem, 
was better suited to their barbarous natures and primi- 
tive stage of culture than the more refined and spiritual 
Christianity. These tribes had never shown any sus- 
ceptibility to civilization, and never had made a con- 
tribution to the arts, literature, or science of the world. 
Probably they were congenitally incapable of it. 
They were destined to perish from the earth any- 
way before the advance of civilization and it would be 
mercy to leave them in peace. 

It is almost impossible to realize the feeling of the 
Greeks and Romans for outside barbarians. We cannot 
nowadays in the light of history regard any people as 
so hopeless as our ancestors seemed to the Romans. 
Those far-off, foggy Tin Islands were in truth inhabited 
by races about on a par with the American Indians, 
lower than most of the races to which we now send mis- 
sionaries. Some of them were painted blue with woad. 
Their rcligion consisted in part of burning people alive 


NORDIC PAGANS 279 


in wicker cages, and in part of shocking rites under the 
mistletoe of which we preserve the mere symbol. Even 
the Anglo-Saxons, worshipers of Tiw, Woden, Thor, 
and Friia, whom we commemorate in the name of four 
days in the week Tiwsday, Wodensday, Thorsday, and 
Friiasday had no higher idea of heaven than a place 
where fighting could go on all day, and at night the 
heroes, dead and alive, could all get drunk together. 
Evidently Christianity could not do anything for such 
folks. It would be wasted on them. 

But, as I said, Gregory was a missionary crank and 
none of these perfectly good arguments made any im- 
pression on him. He sent off a party of monks under 
Augustine to evangelize the British Isles. They got as 
far as France when they heard such awful reports of the 
savages that they were sent out to convert that they 
turned back in despair. You can hear rather unfavor- 
able things said even yet about the British from that 
side of the Channel but in this case they were not 
exaggerated. Augustine went back to Rome to beg 
off, but Gregory persisted, and his forty monks, as 
Gibbon said, conquered England more completely than 
Ceesar’s six legions. 

One by one and in various ways the seven kingdoms 
of the Anglo-Saxon heptarchy became Christianized, 
and it was A.D. 601 before Gregory’s primary objective, 
Deira, or Northumbria, was reached. King Aélla had 
been dead for thirteen years and in his place reigned 
Edwin, his son, Edwin of Edwin’s burgh, now called 
Edinburgh. I have from childhood had a peculiar fond- 
ness for King Edwin, perhaps because of his name, and 
it has always seemed to me that he took the wisest con- 


280 WHEN WE WERE HEATHEN 


ceivable course under the circumstances. When Pau- 
linus, the missionary, appeared at his court he neither 
resented the intrusion nor accepted the new religion un- 
critically. He did not murder the missionaries nor 
demand miracles of them. He summoned a witenage- 
mot, or council, and consulted the wisest of his kingdom 
as to whether they should accept Christianity or cling 
to the faith of their fathers. After some discussion 
Coifi, the high priest of the established religion, arose 
and declared that. the old gods were no good at all. 
He had been a faithful and devout follower of them all 
his life and it had not been of any benefit. The 
old religion was mostly fraud, as none knew better than 
he, its priest, and the new religion must be better since 
it could not well be worse. 

Then an old warrior rose, and said with savage elo- 
quence that the life of man seemed to him like a bird 
that flew out of the darkness into the king’s banquet 
hall and, after circling around in bewilderment at the 
light and noise of revelry, flew out of the opposite win- 
dow into the night again. “Now,” he said, “if these 
strangers can tell us anything of the unknown whence 
we come or whither we go, or how to act for the little 
while that we are in the light, by all means let them 
come and teach us.” So the missionaries came and 
taught, and that is how we became Christians. 

Now the situation is reversed. The despised savages 
of the Tin Islands and their Nordic neighbors have 
become the dominant race of the world and the leaders 
of civilization. The Anglo-Saxon people occupy or 
control more than a quarter of the habitable area of the 
earth. We are increasing in numbers, wealth, and 


SENILE CIVILIZATIONS 281 


power. We cannot say how long this unprecedented 
prosperity will last, but we cannot assume that it will 
last forever. Rotation in leadership seems to be the 
rule of human history. Nations appear to have their 
periods of youth, maturity, and old age, like individuals. 


There is the moral of all human tales, 

Tis but the same rehearsal of the past; 
First freedom, and then glory—when that fails, 
Wealth, vice, corruption, barbarism at last, 

And history with all her volumes vast 
Hath but one page. 


We do not know the reason why peoples or persons 
decline and die. Perhaps there is no reason why. Per- 
haps they might live and flourish forever—but they 
never do. Professor Flinders Petrie* of London Uni- 
versity counts eight successive cycles of civilization, all 
approximately the same length and, applying the same 
measure to the present, looks for its collapse in about 
three hundred years. Oswald Spengler of Germany ° 
using a different system of calculation, arrives at the 
same date, 2200, for the definite decline of civilization 
in Europe, which will finally be flooded by foreign and 
fresher races. A nation is never really overthrown by 
outsiders. It falls like a forest tree from dry rot in the 
trunk. Even when a nation has not yet reached its 
height certain signs of senility may be detected in it, 
just as a man in the full prime of life and vigor may 
sometimes perceive the first symptoms of the diseases 
which he knows from his family history are most likely 


1 Revolutions of Civilization. 
2 Der Untergang des Abendlandes. 


282 WHEN WE WERE HEATHEN 


to cause his death. Professor Petrie enumerates as in- 
dications of approaching national decline the accumu- 
lation of wealth, the slackening of effort, the growth 
of democracy, the demand of the majority for the 
division of wealth, the overthrow of oligarchy, decrease 
in production, and lapse into barbarism. Others have 
suggested such symptoms as the following: increase in 
suicides as showing failing courage or lack of love for 
life; increase in the proportion of insane and feeble- 
minded and in the prevalence of neurasthenia; decrease 
in the birth rate, especially of the better stocks; in- 
crease in homicide and crimes of violence; decline in in- 
dividual initiative and increasing dependence upon gov- 
ernment; extravagance in luxury; excessive devotion 
to athletic spectacles; failure of family life; decline of 
religion as a vital factor in individual life (though there 
may be an increase in ecclesiastical power and pomp); 
recrudescence of superstition; lack of coordination and 
disregard for law. 

These are some of the common, characteristic devel- 
opments that have been observed in periods of national 
decline, but which of them are significant symptoms, 
and whether they are real causes or accidental accom- 
paniments of senescence, has not yet been ascertained. 
The diagnosis of disease in a nation is more difficult 
than in an individual. Racial therapeutics is an un- 
known science. Personally, I have as little confidence 
in the predictions of the date of the death of our civi- 
lization by Petrie and Spengler as I have in the prophe- 
cies of the date of the end of the world deduced from 
Daniel and Revelations. No man knows when or how 
his end will come, and no nation knows either. But 


THE COMING RACE 283 


both may expect that it will come somehow and some- 
time, and both should make preparations accordingly. 

Now in every shift of supremacy from one race to 
another there is always a great loss in the higher 
achievements of civilization. Sometimes there is a 
complete relapse into barbarism for centuries and great 
cities become deserted ruins. The Sumerian, Hittite, 
and Minoan civilizations had been completely forgotten 
until recently unearthed by the archeologist. After 
Rome ceased to be productive there were more than a 
thousand years when almost nothing of importance was 
contributed to science, art, or literature, and much that 
had been known was forgotten and had to be redis- 
covered. If it had not been for the missionary efforts 
of such men as Paul, Gregory, Augustine and Pauline, 
Christianity would have been lost in the wreck of Rome, 
as was Latin learning and literature. 

We cannot know, any more than did the Romans, 
what people will be our successors in the age to come. 
They may be yellow, brown, or black. They may be 
some inconspicuous branch of the white race, or more 
likely some hybrid that has not yet arisen. We can 
only do the best we can by sharing with other peoples 
the best we know, by teaching them what we have 
found out about the laws of nature and about the laws 
of God. Our religion was the best thing we inherited 
from ancient Rome. It is the best thing we have to 
give to others. We can be certain to Christianize our 
successors if we Christianize the world. We have 
simply to follow the Golden Rule. Do unto others as 
others have done unto us. “Freely ye have received, 
freely give.” 


LEST WE FORGET 
(A Fourth of July Sermon) 


The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a 
goodly heritage—Psalm 16:6. 


WE celebrate Independence Day for the same reason 
that we tie a knot in our handkerchief or slip a rubber 
band on our finger. It is to remind us to remember 
not to forget something. And the thing that we are 
so likely to forget that we have to set aside a special 
day to remember it in, is the biggest thing that belongs 
to us—our country. Every Fourth of July address is, 
or should be, a sermon, the eighth chapter of Deuteron- 
omy with its haunting refrain “lest we forget,’ which 
Kipling put into verse in the “Recessional.”’ 

On July 4th every year of the first hundred of our 
national existence the eagle used to scream. Then fol- 
lowed the era when the shadow of the muck-rake fell 
over the land and the eagle sobbed and whined for his 
sins, which were not few. But the last few years 
have shown us that if this country is not nearer heaven 
than Europe it is at any rate farther from hell, so the 
eagle has plucked up courage and is screaming again. 

This is not the time to rehearse the crimes of George 
III. Americans have less desire than ever before to 
rail at their British cousins. But we can celebrate the 
Fourth of July without being accused of narrow pa- 

284 


THE BRITISH FOURTH OF JULY 285 


triotism, for Independence Day is more than a national 
holiday. 

The document to which John Hancock and others 
appended their signatures on that hot July day in 1776 
was not merely the Declaration of the Independence of 
the United States. It was also the charter of political 
freedom and the right of self-government to the com- 
monwealths of Australia and New Zealand, to the Do- 
minion of Canada, to the colony of Newfoundland, and 
to the Union of South Africa. 

The Declaration of Independence gave us our start 
in life, a New England farm and a southern plantation. 
The rest we have got for ourselves. Not a quarter of 
the United States as it exists today was ever under the 
British flag. Our histories have been written too ex- 
clusively on the Atlantic Coast. History, like the 
Constitution, should follow the flag. 

We are inclined to think that the hand of God in 
history is shown only in that of the Jewish nation, that 
no other people has been so signally prospered as a 
reward for following the laws of God or so patently 
punished for disobedience to them. Really, however, 
if we stop to consider it we find that the history of 
Israel is the history of every nation. If it were other- 
wise it would have no value for us as an object lesson. 
The Jews were not a sacred people, they were not a 
divinely inspired nation, but they had divinely in- 
spired historians. ‘Through Moses and the prophets 
there was a succession of men endowed with marvelous 
power to discern cause and effect, to show what were 
the sins which had brought ruin upon the people and 
what were the moral conditions of national prosperity. 


286 LEST WE FORGET 


It is this historical insight which gives the biblical 
records their unique value, and that is why we can 
refer to them for help in the interpretation of our own 
history. 

That the Jews inherited the Promised Land was not 
chance; it was not due to irrational favoritism of God 
acting like a partial father who in his will disinherits 
one son and gives all his property to another. It was 
because the Jews deserved this fair and fruitful land 
that they got it. It was because they were morally 
stronger than the vile and idolatrous Canaanites that 
they were able to conquer them in war and enter into 
the possession of cities which they did not build and 
orchards which they had not planted. This is proved 
by the fact that when the Israelites lost their moral 
superiority over surrounding nations they were over- 
come by them and carried into captivity. War is a 
rough arbiter, rude and cruel, but its decisions are 
rarely unjust. It is a test from time to time to prove 
which people are fitted to survive and to possess the 
world. | 

The government of God is like that of a wise land- 
lord who owns many farms of different value. When 
he sees a neglected farm he removes the tenant and 
puts in his place one who has been getting larger crops 
and keeping his farm in good condition. So a country is 
given to that people which can make the best use of it, 
and only so long as it is doing better than other nations 
can it hold possession. There is not enough land in the 
world for any of it to remain idle or in incompetent 
hands. A nation is allowed to govern itself only so 
long as it can govern itself well. When it ceases to do 


OUR TITLE DEEDS 287 


that the government is put into the more competent 
hands of some other nation. 

We are not the original owners of this beautiful 
country. Nobody knows how many former tenants 
there have been. We know that there was the Indian— 
various tribes of different degrees of savagery, whose 
only idea of usefulness was to kill the deer and the 
buffalo and fight each other. There was the Spaniard, 
who searched the country over for gold but cared 
nothing for the more valuable coal and iron. He was 
not a suitable tenant. There was the Frenchman hunt- 
ing for furs or seeking to establish in the wild West a 
feudal vassalage for Louis XIV. Still the land was 
vacant. 

Finally came our own race and took possession not 
by accident, not by fate, not by favoritism, but because 
we more than other nations were fitted to cultivate it. 
Because in our hands it could be made more useful to 
humanity than in the hands of the Indian, the Spaniard, 
or the Frenchman. Because we can draw the waters of 
the mountain brook around our fields and make the 
desert fruitful. Because we can dig out the coal and 
iron and from them make the thousands of articles 
needed by the people in other lands. Because we can 
offer to the men who came to us from other nations 
freedom, justice, work, and wages. 

It is for these reasons that the Lord our God has 
given us this land; this land of fountains and depths 
that spring out of the valleys and hills; a land wherein 
we shall eat bread without scarceness; a land whose 
stones are iron, and out of whose hills we may dig coal 
and copper. 


288 LEST WE FORGET 


But let us beware ‘‘lest we forget” on what condi- 
tions we hold this fair land. It was not given to us, 
it was leased. It was not deeded in fee simple to us, our 
heirs and assigns forever; we have merely the usufruct 
of it. It is not leased to us in perpetuity, not even for 
ninety-nine years, not for any definite period of time, 
however short. Our tenure is dependent on our com- 
plying with the conditions. These conditions are simply 
obedience to the laws of God. Every deed to man or 
nation contains this. clause expressed or understood, 
and without it every conveyance is null and void. The 
Ten Commandments were given to us as to the Jews 
with this inducement, ‘“‘that thy days may be prolonged 
and it may go well with thee in the land the Lord thy 
God giveth thee.” And we have warning by precept 
and example that action for dispossession follows im- 
mediately on our failure to keep the conditions; ‘‘as the 
nations which the Lord destroyeth before your face 
so shall ye perish because ye would not be obedient unto 
the voice of the Lord your God.” 

Since our lives and our country, our prosperity and 
happiness, depend on our obedience to God’s com- 
mands, it is important to study with the greatest care 
this clause in our contract. How then can we know 
God’s will? Where can we find God’s laws? Nowhere 
in a condensed and easily accessible form. Everywhere 
if we look for them. The laws of God are not codified 
and we cannot purchase a single volume of “Revised 
Statutes” containing all of them. They are written in 
our minds and bodies; they are embodied in the 
materials with which we work and in the food we eat; 
they are expressed in the words of great and good men; 


GOD’S POLITICS 289 


they are contained in all history properly written. 
Some of them are in the Bible, a very small part of 
them, but including the most important. Even those 
laws of God revealed in the Bible are not so clear as 
we should like them to be. They are written in Hebrew 
and Greek. I do not refer to the language merely. 
We can translate that, but the ideas, the symbols, and 
the mode of thought are ancient and foreign. We have 
to employ ministers to study them and explain them 
to us week after week. Other laws of God, especially 
those which govern his material world, are being 
studied, arranged, and codified by scientists who de- 
vote their lives to this work. God’s laws dealing with 
the political and social relations of men are studied by 
legislators and jurists and are embodied, more or less 
imperfectly, in our statute books. Legislators do not 
invent good laws; they formulate them in accordance 
with the facts, just as scientists do. If they do formu- 
late a false law and pass it, it is null and void by de- 
cision of the Supreme Judge of the Universe, and all 
the powers of the government, state or national, cannot 
enforce it. The more they try to enforce a wrong law, 
the more mischief it makes. 

Through the labors of theologians, scientists, and 
jurists, and all others who try to find and tell the truth, 
we have found out many of God’s laws and can see 
to some extent why it is that rewards follow their ful- 
fillment and punishment their violation. We see that 
this is not by the arbitrary act of a capricious despot 
but is the direct action of cause and effect, and we rec- 
ognize its justice whenever we understand it. God has 
linked together, in this world, righteousness and pros- 


290 LEST WE FORGET 


perity, wrongdoing and misfortune, and what God has 
joined together no man may put asunder. When a man 
has health it is a sign that he is obeying God’s laws of 
hygiene. When a nation is growing in population and 
wealth we may assume that it is obeying God’s laws of 
political economy. It is the only certain test. 

When a chemist discovers a new compound and 
wishes to know if it is of value as a medicine he takes 
it himself—in small doses. So when some new political 
remedy is proposed as a cure for some or all of our 
social ills, we should not turn a deaf ear to its enthu- 
siastic and often overzealous advocates; neither should 
we adopt it blindly as a cure-all. We should simply 
try it—in small doses—and carefully watch the effect. 

It might be objected—in fact the devil brought for- 
ward this suggestion several thousand years ago—that 
sometimes the wicked prosper and it is the righteous 
who suffer. This is obviously true. We all of us think 
that this is the case whenever we suffer. As the rain 
falleth alike on the just and the unjust, so the cyclone 
deals out death to the good and the bad. We have seen 
the wicked flourish and the innocent afflicted. But we 
all realize that the prosperity of evil is temporary and 
rare, that a lie cannot long endure, and that the truth 
is mighty and shall prevail. Wickedness does not pay; 
that is the great lesson of life. Happy are those who 
learn it from precept instead of experience. 

We talk about the desirability of getting God on our 
side in any conflict or cause. We sometimes try to 
get God to espouse our cause by bribes or petitions. | 
We try to get some good man who might be supposed 
to have a “pull” with the Almighty to exert his influ- 


OUR SACRED HISTORY 291 


ence in our behalf. Now there is only one way of get- 
ting God on our side, and that is to get on God’s side. 
We can always be sure of being on the winning side if 
we find out which side is right and join that. The 
only way to get God’s favor is to do his will. He rec- 
ognizes no professed adherents—only followers. His 
rewards are not misplaced. 

If we as a nation have enjoyed to an exceptional 
degree the favor of God, it cannot be that it was alto- 
gether undeserved. It is our virtues, not our vices, 
which have brought us this remarkable prosperity and 
we therefore have a right to take pride in it. In fact, 
it is the only thing we have the right to take pride in; 
anything else is vanity and conceit. A nation becomes 
formidable through its virtues and dangerous through 
its vices. 

Our history properly written would show the hand 
of Providence guiding and controlling a nation as 
clearly as the biblical histories. It should be written, 
as they were, from the standpoint of God rather than 
that of man. It should be written as a general on the 
hilltop writes the history of a battle, not as it was seen 
by a private in the ranks. So written, our history 
would be found not less remarkable and instructive 
than the history of the Jews in the Bible. It would tell 
of the flight of our ancestors, Catholic and Protestant, 
from persecution and oppression as the followers of 
Moses fled from Egypt. It would tell of the wandering 
of our race in deserts far wider than Sinai, of battles 
with barbarous inhabitants of the land and their over- 
throw. It would narrate the curious chain of events, 
of court intrigues and corrupt statesmanship, by which 


292 LEST WE FORGET 


the western part of this country fell into the hands of 
the only man in Europe who would have sold it, and 
at a time when he had to have money. We have built 
greater cities than Jerusalem and grander temples than 
Solomon’s. We have blown down stronger walls than 
those of Jericho, and have crossed dry-shod wider rivers 
than Jordan. 

One way of valuing anything is by knowing its price. 
We begin to appreciate the value of this heritage of 
ours when we study history and learn what it has cost. 
When we think of the thousands who have given their 
lives to free our country and to preserve it intact, when 
we think of the millions who have labored, each at his 
own task, great or small, to make our country what it 
is, then we know what our heritage is worth. We are 
the heirs of all the ages. Our civilization, our language, 
our science, our ideas of right and justice, our religion, 
we have inherited and we must see to it that we guard 
well what has been entrusted to us. Our country and 
our civilization are not ours alone; they must be passed 
on to our posterity undiminished and unimpaired. We 
are simply the trustees of this estate and must not 
squander it for our personal pleasure. We must pre- 
serve it by righteousness and wisdom. I put them 
together because they are really the same thing. We 
hear actions called righteous which are not wise, and 
deeds called wise which are not right, but it is a mis- 
take, an impossibility. It is wise only to do right. 

We must not live in selfish enjoyment of our herit- 
age, thinking it will last our time, saying as the reck- 
less king, “After us the deluge.’ We must leave no 
small evil to grow, no sores in the body politic to fester 


FOES OF THE HOUSEHOLD 293 


into dangerous wounds. We know what our forefathers 
the founders of the Republic thought about slavery. 
It was bad, they realized, but it was a little thing, a 
tumor which it would hurt to cut out. The nation was 
weak and any decisive action would have alienated 
some of the states. Perhaps slavery would die out; 
anyway, it would not grow. But it did grow, and it 
required one of the bloodiest wars of modern history to 
cut this tumor from the breast of the nation. Let us 
beware lest we make the same mistake, leaving some 
other social injustice to grow and inflame until riot or 
war is the only remedy. 

Nations are always conquered from the inside. So 
long as we are morally strong we shall be strong in 
every other way. Our only dangerous foes are within 
the country, not without. Those who perpetrate in- 
justice, those who appeal to violence, those who stir 
up class hatred are the men whom we as a nation have 
to dread and against whom we have to protect ourselves. 
Liberty and independence, law and order, are not pre- 
served by written constitutions and statutes; not by 
police and armies; not by wealth and success, but by 
the morality of the people. The government and insti- 
tutions of a country cannot rise much higher than the 
general ethical level. We cannot expect a government 
to be honest while the people are dishonest. The man- 
agement of public finances will not be honest so long 
as the people dodge taxes. Legislators will not take 
care of public money as though it were their own so 
long as the people do not treat public property as they 
would their own. Soldiers will loot and destroy if the 
people lynch. Railroads will charge unfair rates so 


294 LEST WE FORGET 


long as passengers will use tickets over again if the 
conductor fails to collect them. It is personal wicked- 
ness which makes our laws and institutions work so 
badly, and we are quite safe in thinking that no other 
sociological contrivances, however cunningly devised, 
will work much better until the foundation of all so- 
ciety, which is the average morality, is raised. 
Whether, then, we as a people shall prosper or go 
bankrupt depends simply on whether each one of us is 
worth his wages. Are you giving to society an amount 
of service equivalent to what you spend on yourself? 
Are you working your way, or are you sponging on the 
rest? Each man, as he receives his three dollars, his 
five dollars, or ten dollars for his day’s work, ought 
to consider what he has done that day for other people 
which entitles him to that amount of money. If a 
carpenter, has he made something that day worth so 
much more than the lumber? If a lawyer, has he to 
that extent helped to obtain justice and insure fair deal- 
ing? Ifa merchant, has he been of so much service to 
society in the distribution of goods? If not, then of 
course he has cheated his neighbors, and cannot call 
himself an honest man, no matter how willingly the 
money was paid to him. This is elementary morality. 
The ideal Christian standard is higher yet. This re- 
quires not only that you give as much service to society 
as is expected of you for the wages you receive, but 
also that you do all that you possibly can. The com- 
mon plan is to work as few hours as possible and to get 
as much for itas you can. Trusts and trade unions are 
organized with that aim, and strikes and lockouts are 
for that purpose. This, of course, is precisely the op- 


THE GOSPEL OF GOOD WORKS 295 


posite of the Christian plan, which is to do as much for 
others as you can and take as little as possible for 
yourself. 

Our duty as tenants of this domain is primarily to 
develop it. It was let to us unfinished and unfurnished, 
only partially fit for human habitation. The days of 
creation are not ended. In various places the igneous 
formations are still being made, the rough forge work 
which was finished in most of the world hundreds of 
thousands of years ago. Everywhere we see some- 
thing left for us to do. To complete the work of crea- 
tion is our religious duty as much as anything else. 

In that ancient religion which is nearest akin to the 
Jewish, and from which we Christians have borrowed 
much, this idea is clearly expressed. To dig an irriga- 
tion ditch is better than saying many prayers; to kill 
a wolf is as good as to sing a hymn. So spake Zara- 
thustra. And thus saith the Lord of Hosts by the 
mouth of his prophet Jeremiah: “Build ye houses and 
dwell in them, and plant gardens, and eat the fruit of 
them.”” The evolutionist who creates a new crop is a 
true disciple of the Creator. 

It may be said that this gospel of work does not need 
preaching at the present time and in this country. It 
may not need to be taught, but it does need to be 
preached. But what we do need to have called to our 
attention is the religious aspect of such service; thank- 
fulness for our opportunities for such work, a realiza- 
tion of our duty to do it, and a sense of our responsi- 
bility for doing it well, lest we forget. 

We Americans do not believe that people should 
be pressed into the same mold, machined to the same 


296 LEST WE FORGET 


pattern. It was to escape such a process that many 
of us or our ancestors came to America. 

America was populated by the persecuted. Puritans 
from England, Huguenots from France, Germans from 
the Rhine, Catholics from Ireland, Czecho-Slovaks 
from Austria-Hungary, Armenians from Turkey, Jews 
from Russia. These are but a few of those who fled 
to America for freedom from the religious, economic, 
racial, or military oppression at home. All these were 
protestants and nonconformists in the original sense of 
these words, whether they were Catholics or Congre- 
gationalists. ‘They were a chosen people—chosen to 
be kicked out from their native lands. Whether our 
fathers came over in the Mayflower along with a ship- 
load of furniture and pewter ware or whether they 
came over later in the more comfortable accommoda- 
tions of a steamer steerage, it was mostly because they 
were considered undesirable citizens that they were 
forced or permitted to depart. 

America is a chosen land—selected out of all parts 
of the world as their future home by those who desired 
or were obliged to leave their native homes. This is an 
honor that we should appreciate and endeavor to serve. 
The United States is a synthetic nation. Other coun- 
tries “just growed,” like Topsy. Ours is the conscious 
and considered creation of its people. European and 
Asiatic countries are almost entirely populated by those 
who were born there and did not have energy enough to 
get away. Our population is largely composed of those 
who were not born here and had energy enough to 
come. What is called patriotism is sometimes not love 
of country but mere laziness. Our patriotism is less 


WE ARE THE STATE 297 


alloyed with this element than any other, for a large 
proportion of Americans love America because they 
have lived elsewhere. They came here because they 
thought they would find it best; they stay here because 
they have found it best. Americanism is an elective 
course. 

Our form of government is no hand-me-down from a 
former generation, no misfit borrowed from another 
land. It is made to measure and remade to fit. Our 
social system is more of a skin than a coat. It grows 
with us. Every man his own tailor is the law of democ- 
racy. The king of France said, “I am the State.” It 
was a lie and they cut off his head for it. The Ameri- 
can citizen says “I am the State,” and it is the literal 
truth. All men are monarchs. This develops a sense 
of responsibility. In other lands the people can com- 
plain, “Why don’t they do it?” In America we can 
only wonder, ‘“‘Why don’t we do it?” 

Consequently the first lesson to be taught to an im- 
migrant is that patriotism in the American sense is a 
different thing from Old World patriotism. American- 
ism does not mean loyalty to a king; it does not mean 
attachment to a particular spot of ground; it does not 
mean conformity to a fixed code of customs; it does not 
mean the perpetuation of traditional institutions; it 
does not mean the aversion to novel and foreign ideas; 
it does not mean hostility toward those who differ from 
us. 

Americanism is one of the fine arts, the finest of all 
the fine arts, the art of getting along peaceably with 
all sorts and conditions of men. We Americans have 
had more experience with the practice of this art than 


298 LEST WE FORGET 


other nations, and it is not undue boasting to say that 
we have acquired a certain proficiency in it. A steel 
mill may contain twenty different nationalities, and 
they do not quarrel any more than so many Irishmen 
or Poles in their native land. A city block is a map of 
Europe in miniature. ‘The immigrants try to keep up 
their traditional antipathies, but there are few Old 
World feuds that, if let alone, can resist the solvent 
atmosphere of America. Their children when they go 
to school call each other names and stretch their little 
necks trying to look down on one another. And when 
they grow up they go into partnership or intermarry. 
So, scrapping and bargaining, quarreling and flirting, 
studying together and working together, they learn to 
know each other and become good Americans together. 

No nation was ever before put to such a strain as 
ours in the Great War, for none ever contained so many 
representatives of the belligerent nationalities; yet none 
proved more stable and strong. Our national motto 
was not true when it was adopted, but it is now. At 
last the American people, regardless of racial diversity, 
can say with sincerity: United we stand. 


THE NINE SONS OF SATAN 
(Not a Sermon but a Fable) 


Now in the days before Adam, when Satan was alone 
on the earth, Allah made a helpmeet for him out of the 
smokeless flame. And Awwa was the name of Satan’s 
wife and she bore him nine sons, not born after the 
manner of men, but hatched like serpents of leathern 
eggs in the sands of the desert where the sun stands 
overhead at noon. And it came to pass when men be- 
gan to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters 
were born to them, that the sons of Satan saw the 
daughters of men that they were fair and they took 
them wives of all which they chose. And their children 
were called jinns and they increased and multiplied ex- 
ceedingly, and spread abroad over all the earth and to 
the islands of the sea and into the land which is beyond 
the great waters. And every land wherein they went, 
there they abide to this day. But men know not the 
sons of Satan save by their works; for they are fash- 
ioned after the likeness of man, and appear as angels 
of light. 

In the days when the earth was young the sons of 
Satan had little to do, for all mankind dwelt together 
in one place, tilling the soil or tending the flocks. And 
their sins were like themselves, few and simple. But 
after their tongues were confounded, and they were 


scattered abroad according to their nations, they 
299 


300 THE NINE SONS OF SATAN 


sought out many inventions. Then had the genera- 
tions of jinns to change their ways and adopt the new 
inventions and divide their labors among themselves, 
each according to his ability. 


FIRST SON 


The Arabian authors, to whose surprisingly wide 
knowledge I am indebted for most of the above, have 
even recorded for us the names of the nine sons of 
Satan and their respective functions. The oldest of 
them, or if not the oldest, one of the first to get busy, 
was Haffan, whom the Greeks call Dionysos, and the 
Latins Bacchus, and the Prohibitionists the Demon 
Rum. Noah planted a vineyard soon after all the world 
had gone wet, and quite innocently took to grape juice 
as a beverage. But Haffan, with the aid of some mil- 
lions of microscopic jinns, known nowadays as sac- 
charomyces cerevisiz, introduced into it a subtle poison 
which brought disgrace upon Noah as it has upon so 
many of his descendants. 

But Haffan’s power for evil was limited in ancient 
times, because, try as he would, he never could bring 
the alcoholic content of wine, beer, and cider above 
five or ten per cent. Here the fermentation stopped, 
for the little devils in the drink died of the poison they 
had brewed. The drink was then strong enough to 
make men foolish and slothful and loose-lipped, but 
these effects soon wore off and rarely carried his victim 
on to those mad deeds which alone could satisfy Haf- 
fan’s diabolical ambitions. Not until the twelfth cen- 
tury after Christ were means discovered by which he 


THE BOTTLE IMP 301 


could turn out a product capable of matching in wick- 
edness anything his brothers could do. It is, as we 
might expect, an Arabian chemist, Abdulcasim, who is 
discredited with the invention of distillation by which 
brandy, whisky, and liquors of any desired strength 
can be manufactured. He put his product on the 
market under the trade name of the Elixir of Life, or 
eau de vie. But it turned out to be something quite the 
opposite. Such tricks as these gave to chemistry the 
name of the Black Art and brought the science under a 
cloud of suspicion from which it has but recently and 
not yet altogether emerged. It was long the popular 
belief that chemists were inspired of the devil or were 
the sons of Satan in disguise, and indeed the certifica- 
tion of such suspicion may be found in the records of 
many courts where chemists were found guilty, either 
by the testimony of experts or by their own confession 
under torture, of having sold themselves to the Evil 
One in exchange for their skill. 


SECOND SON 


Chemistry has also been the chief aid of another of 
the sons of Satan, Lakis, the Fire Fiend. He seems to 
have inherited his mother’s ardent disposition, but his 
power also was at first limited and 


He grieved he bin 
Too small to sin 
To the hight of his desire. 


The most he could do in antiquity was to burn a hut 
by upsetting an oil lamp or wipe out a village with a 


302 THE NINE SONS OF SATAN 


forest fire. So he spent most of his time haunting the 
bitumen lakes of Baku, where the priests of Zara- 
thustra kept the Eternal Flame alight. His brethren, 
Awan and Zulbaysun, who lived in the city and did a 
thriving business in court and counting-house, used to 
come and sit on the crest of the Caucasus, with their 
legs dangling over the precipice, and make fun of him 
for wading around knee-deep in the asphalt. Then La- 
kis, mightily vexed, stuck his pitchfork down deep 
through the crust of the lake and cast the pitch far up 
the mountain-side so that it bespattered their fine rai- 
ment, while out of the hole there rose a dreadful black 
smoke and stench as though it came from the depth of 
Tophet. Then as Awan and Zulbaysun flew away down 
the Euphrates valley toward Bagdad, he shouted after 
them and said: ‘Smell that, O my brothers, and know 
that the time shall come when men shall leave your 
cities and seek the waste places of the earth where this, 
my treasure, is found. And when one shall strike the 
rock there shall gush forth a fountain of oil without 
measure, and then will your merchant princes, O Zul- 
baysun, be as beggars before him, and your kings, O 
Awan, become as his hirelings. For in those days shall 
chariots of fire run about the streets and with the tenth 
part of an ephah of fined oil shall they outrun the 
swiftest horse of Arabia and kijl many people. And 
men shall go under the sea in the belly of a leviathan 
wrought of iron for the greater peril of those who go 
down to the sea in ships, and make themselves rocs on 
whose wings they may fly like the jinns over mountain 
and sea.” And after many days it came to pass even as 
he had said. 


THE DEEDS OF LUCIFER 303 


But Lakis in the meantime, while waiting for the 
fulfillment of his prophecy, was not idle, but kept his 
agents experimenting in many lands. In the kingdom 
of Sin, which is in Far Cathay, dwelt a man who, in- 
spired of Lakis, burned willows and made charcoal and 
went into the desert and scraped up saltpeter and into 
the mountains and dug brimstone. All these he got and 
brayed them together in a mortar and gave of the mix- 
ture to his countrymen for a weapon of offense. But 
the Sinae were a peaceful and a foolish folk and they 
only made firecrackers out of the powder for merri- 
ment at weddings and funerals. 

But Lakis had better luck when he got the ear of a 
monk in the West, Roger Bacon by name, a notorious 
wizard. For then men began to make guns bigger and 
bigger every year until they got up to forty-two centi- 
meters. And Lakis showed them how to dip qutun, as 
the Arabs call it, or as we say “cotton,” into Strong 
Water and to dissolve it in the al kohol, invented by 
Haffan, and with this to load the guns. Then would 
flames and thunder burst forth like afreets from a bot- 
tle, and ten miles away a hundred soldiers would fall 
down dead by this magic. 

And much other mischief did Lakis do. The inven- 
tion of matches was ascribed to him, as their original 
name of “lucifers” showed. This put into the hands of 
every evil-minded man or silly child the power to set 
fire to a home or perhaps to burn a city. The number 
of Fire Worshipers increased in the latter days until 
one saw in the streets almost every man and many of 
the boys carrying in their mouths a lighted weed giving 
forth the incense most pleasing to the nostrils of Lakis. 


304 THE NINE SONS OF SATAN 


So in the course of time Lakis, whom the Northmen 
called ‘‘Loki” and the Latins ‘‘Lux,” came to be es- 
teemed the greatest instead of the least of all the sons 
of Satan. No magic was more powerful than his, and 
when one would prove his devilish origin, like Mephis- 
topheles in the ratskeller, he would draw forth fire by 
scratching the table, a miracle which nowadays any- 
body can perform, so well has Lakis taught his lesson 
to the world. 


THIRD SON 


Now I would not have you suppose from the incident 
mentioned above that the sons of Satan were always 
quarreling. On the contrary, they were kept so busy 
that their idle hands found little mischief to do, except, 
of course, in their professional capacity. Save for an 
occasional squabble over which should be greatest in 
the kingdom of Iblis they got on together better than 
most human brethren and threw a good deal of busi- 
ness in each other’s way. For instance, Lakis would 
never have prospered as maker of munitions if it had 
not been for his brother Awan, who was Councilor of 
Kings. He had his minions in every ministry and prac- 
tically controlled the diplomatic service of the world. 
In that way he was able to stir up wars and rumors of 
wars at any time and keep national jealousy and race 
hatreds always aflame. In the old days men only went 
to war once a year or so, and not all of them then, and 
they took care to get back in time for harvest, or, at 
any rate, before the cold weather set in. But in the 
course of centuries Awan got things in such a fix that 


DEMOCRACY AND THE DEVIL 305 


wars lasted all the year round, and even in time of so- 
called peace a large part of the young men were serving 
in the army and others spent all of their days in the 
shops of Lakis making arms and ammunition. And 
acting on the advice of Awan the kings invested money 
in each other’s gun shops, so it often happened that 
when they went to war they found themselves con- 
fronted with weapons made by their own people and 
were attacked by warships from their own yards. For 
the sons of Satan are no respecters of persons and quite 
devoid of race prejudice. 

Finally it occurred to some people that if they could 
get rid of kings they would get rid of the evil council 
of Awan. But that did not help matters much. Though 
they put four and twenty barons to rule over the king 
and four hundred and twenty commons to rule over the 
barons, and forty-two million voters to rule over the 
commons, Awan’s influence grew none the less. He al- 
ways seemed to be able to get hold of the man higher 
up, however low down he might be. 


FOURTH SON 


In thus perverting the opinions of the people Awan’s 
chief aid was his younger brother, Masbut the Tattler. 
Like the rest of the family, Masbut began business in a 
small way, using as his agents chiefly women and bar- 
bers. This was voluntary and unpaid labor, amateur- 
ish at best, although it is astonishing how active and 
diligent some of them were in the spreading of news, 
especially of a discreditable nature, and how much 
harm could be accomplished in a community by such 


306 THE NINE SONS OF SATAN 


amateur efforts. “He that increaseth knowledge in- 
creaseth sorrow,” especially when it isn’t so. 

It was not until the invention of printing that Mas- 
but really got his start and scandalmongery was put 
upon a professional basis. Like Lakis, he tried to 
Jaunch his discovery in China, but a country without 
an alphabet is no place for the printing business. But 
when Gutenberg once got it going in Germany it be- 
came one of the most efficient means of extending the 
kingdom of the Father of Lies. Books were too slow, 
the presses took to turning out quarterlies, then month- 
lies, weeklies, dailies, and hourlies, and those that came 
out oftenest served the purpose of Masbut best. 

The mails were too slow for him, so he borrowed the 
lightning of Lakis and spread the news by copper wires 
and ether waves. When a lie travels at the rate of 
186,000 miles a second it is hard for the truth to catch 
up with it. It is strange to think that once this im- 
portant business of news-spreading was left to the cas- 
ual calls of housewives or chance meetings on the 
Agora, the Rialto, or the corner grocery, when we now 
see its ramifications covering the world as with a net. 
Every day forests are cut down and ground up to be 
stamped with black words. Schools are established to 
educate young men in the art of gathering news and 
dishing it up to suit the popular taste. This gives 
Masbut his chance, for with every truth he mingles 
some falsehood so cunningly that even those who are 
trained to handle the news cannot disentangle it. In 
fact, we may be sure that no considerable piece of 
wickedness is put through without the aid of Masbut, 
the Printer’s Devil. 


THE DEMON ON THE HEARTH 307 


FIFTH SON 


It is he who transmits the misleading messages of 
Awan the Diplomatist and publishes them in books 
named from the colors of the rainbow. He is also the 
right-hand man of Zulbaysun, who makes mischief in 
bazaars and turns the river of gold to his own purposes. 
*Twas Zulbaysun who blew the South Sea bubble and 
many a bigger since. He robs widows and orphans of 
their inheritance and brings the honest merchant to 
ruin. In the old days he confined himself to such 
picayune business as clipping coins and tampering with 
weights and measures. But our complex interdigita- 
tion of credit gives him an opportunity for operations 
on a large scale and in secrecy. So active is he that 
there are many people who consider him responsible 
for all the deviltry in the world. Capitalism, they call 
him, with strong accent on the second syllable, and 
they believe that if he were banished the earth would be 
a utopia, forgetting that there are eight other devils as 
wicked as he. 


SIXTH SON 


Dasim, the sixth of the sons of Satan, is a domestic 
devil. The hearthstone was his primary place of busi- 
ness, and the substitution of the steam radiator has by 
no means decreased his opportunities. He instigates 
the sharp retort; he directs the poisoned arrow at the 
weakest joints in the armor of self-esteem as they have 
been disclosed in the intimacy of family life. He 
lights the flame of illicit love and fires the train of 


308 THE NINE SONS OF SATAN 


jealousy that leads to crime. In his sphere of influ- 
ence the progress of invention has made less change 
than it has with his brothers, for he works on the primi- 
tive emotions, the desires and appetites that remain the 
same through all the ages in spite of changes in custom. 
The laws of sociological geometry are eternal and the 
triangle has three sides in every land. A writ in Reno 
may take the place of a bag in the Bosporus, but the 
principle remains the same. Dasim has always given 
special attention tothe dinner table, the center of do- 
mestic disunion. It is he who cools the coffee and over- 
does the steak, in order to make them subjects of break- 
fast controversy. A person into whom he has entered 
is euphemistically said to have dyspepsia, sick head- 
ache, liver complaint, or something of the kind, but 
everybody in the house knows what is the matter. He 
hath a devil. Dasim’s bad cooking is, some folks say, 
responsible for as much mischief as his brother Haffan 
has accomplished with his wine. Nothing is too petty 
for him. He will possess at times the best-tempered 
youngster, and he displays a most diabolical ingenuity 
in spoiling a well planned dinner party by instigating 
a malapropos remark or introducing a controversial 
topic. He is the inventor of a code of table etiquette 
that has caused a heap of unhappiness, for a violation 
of it, such as the picking up of the wrong fork or send- 
ing the wine around the table against the sun brings 
down upon the offender a greater social penalty than a 
conventional breach of the moral law. He also intro- 
duced the tipping system and after-dinner speeches. 
Dasim does not confine his activities to the dining-room. 
He also holds sway in the kitchen and is the fomenter 


THE MELOMANIAC 309 


of all the trouble with maids, cooks, and help generally, 
to say nothing about the trouble they have with their 
employers. On the whole, Dasim is not the least among 
his brethren, even though they do make a lot of fun of 
him because he does not introduce modern improve- 
ments, but sticks to the same old tricks that he used in 
the days of Eve and Lilith, and Jacob and Esau. 


SEVENTH SON 


One of his closest associates, next to Haffan, is Mar- 
rah, who as the master of music and dancing runs one 
of the broadest and most enticing highways leading to 
the halls of Iblis. Hardly had Jubal got out his patents 
on the first string and wind instruments before Marrah 
began to pervert them to his own purposes. As soon as 
Dionysos had stuck together the hollow reeds of his 
syrinx and Apollo had stretched the strings across the 
tortoise shell Marrah took possession of them. In 
Africa he uses the tom-tom, in America the phonograph 
or jazz band, to excite uncontrollable passions. He in- 
spired the Lydian strains which soften the moral fiber. 
He taught the Sirens and the Lorelei. Young and other- 
wise charming virgins are deceived by him into think- 
ing that they have musical genius, and then they spend 
years and all the money they can borrow in trying to 
reach high C and hammering ivory with their finger 
tips, causing thereby much misery to all within earshot, 
who nevertheless are inspired to encourage the practice 
by complimentary lies. He devised the nautch, the fox- 
trot, the corroboree, the bunny hug, the fandango, the 
bacchanale, the waltz, and the can-can, and may be re- 


310 THE NINE SONS OF SATAN 


lied upon to bring out half a dozen new variations of 
the old motif within the next few years, for his ingenu- 
ity is inexhaustible. The whole horde of hops, dips, 
glides, skips, scrambles, hugs, squirms, prances, kicks, 
cuddles, writhes, and wiggles come from his fertile 
brain. He is the St. Vitus of the infernal hagiology. 
The saxophone and radio are his latest aids. 


- EIGHTH SON 


It must not be supposed that in this division of labor 
the church is neglected. On the contrary there is a spe- 
cial ecclesiastical department, and this is under the ef- 
ficient management of Dulhan, eighth of the sons of 
Iblis. The children of Dulhan attend church regularly, 
rarely missing a service of any denomination. Sitting 
invisibly by the side of the would-be worshipers they 
whisper inaudibly to distract attention from the devo- 
votions proper to the place and hour. They set the eye 
to roving over the congregation, and whatsoever it falls 
upon suggests some critical or malicious comment. 
Perhaps it is a question of the taste of a lady in the 
matter of headgear; perhaps it is a suspicion of the 
business morals of a pillar of the church; anything may 
serve the purpose of frustrating the aim of the service. 
The Beni Dulhan even enter the pulpit and whisper 
doubts to the preacher of the usefulness of his work, 
the truth of his message, and the sincerity of his hear- 
ers. Buta better field even than the pews or the pulpit 
they find in the choir loft. Here, in complicity with 
his brother Marrah, the musical fiend, Dulhan can 
cause any amount of mischief, and it is not without 


BEELZEBUB 311 


reason that certain of the stricter sects have banished 
choirs and musical instruments altogether. 

Unlike the rest of his brethren, it cannot be said 
that the advance of civilization has enlarged the scope 
of Dulhan’s operations, though some would say that 
this was because he had been quite too successful in his 
efforts at undermining the church. At any rate Dulhan 
no longer has the power he used to have when the secu- 
lar arm was at his disposal, when the auto-da-fé was a 
public holiday, the rack and thumbscrews in operation, 
and kings trembled at the threat of bell, book, and 
candle. Nowadays, except for an occasional pogrom 
in Poland or a riot in India, Dulhan’s power of perse- 
cution does not extend beyond a farcical and ineffec- 
tive trial for heresy. But as superintendent of the 
paving department of the highways leading to the in- 
fernal regions he is kept as busy as ever. 


NINTH SON 


It is not necessary to dwell upon the deeds of Wassin, 
or, aS some authorities call him, Tir, ninth of Satan’s 
sons, because they are conspicuous and dreaded by all. 
He it is who is responsible for all public calamities, for 
battle and tempest, for plague, pestilence, and famine, 
and all like ills from which the Litany beseeches deliv- 
erance. The destruction of Pompeii and Messina, of 
Lisbon and Tokyo, are among his achievements. In 
the line of hydraulics he has doubtless never surpassed 
his first exploit in the days of Noah, though on account 
of the sparse population of the globe at that time the 
destruction was not so great as might have been ex- 


312 THE NINE SONS OF SATAN 


pected from the effort. Of all the infernal family there 
is none with a greater host of helpers than Wassin. 
Their name is legion. The sands of the sea are scanty 
in comparison. What is more, they have the magic 
power of becoming invisible and multiplying by the mil- 
lion within a few minutes, so that a city is devastated 
in a day by a pestilence. With an innumerable host 
of bacteria, bacilli, microbes, parasites, he invades the 
bodily citadel, and then man falls a victim to the Black 
Death, the White Plague, the Yellow Fever, or the Scar- 
let Fever, to the pestilence that walketh in darkness or 
the destruction that wasteth at noonday. 

Formerly it was supposed that death was carried on 
the wings of the wind, so Wassin was called ‘Prince of 
the Power of the Air” or “Malaria.” We now know 
that he mostly makes use of insects as his agents of 
transmission, and this identifies him with Beelzebub, 
the God of Flies, and makes him responsible for at 
least seven of the ten plagues of Egypt. Zarathustra, 
one of the wisest of the prophets who have appeared 
upon the earth in the course of centuries to warn man- 
kind of the wiles of the sons of Satan, taught his fol- 
lowers that to kill an insect was the best way of saying 
a prayer, and that to dig a drainage ditch was more 
acceptable to Ahura-Mazda than to burn a fat bullock 
on the altar. So, too, Goethe tells us that Faust 
achieved deliverance from the bonds of Mephistopheles, 
not by fasting and penance, but by turning his atten- 
tion to sanitary engineering. 

Thus the unending warfare goes on between the Sons 
of Eve and the Sons of Awwa. On strange battlefields 
and with novel arms, but the fight is ever the same; 


THE FRUIT OF THE TREE 313 


new wiles are met with new defenses, mines are coun- 
termined, and wits match wits. ’Tis hard to tell at any 
time which way the conflict turns, for the Heavenly and 
Diabolic Hosts, as they descending and ascending meet 
upon this our world, adopt confusing disguises, fight 
under false flags, and often wrest from their opponents 
their most effective weapons. Our wildered eyes fail to 
distinguish the Angels of Light from the Angels of 
Darkness, and we strike out blindly at friend and foe. 
In this Holy War for the possesson of Mansoul there 
are no neutrals or noncombatants and never is a truce 
declared. Yet the land is fair to look upon and we 
often forget that it is a battlefield until of a sudden we 
are struck down and grievously wounded by a missile 
from some unseen source. We need sharper eyesight 
and a more understanding brain if we are to resist all 
the wiles of the devil. For this we must eat of the fruit 
of the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, but that 
stands in the midst of the Garden of Eden and an angel 
with a flaming sword guards the gate of it. 

Still, our case is not altogether hopeless. We evi- 
dently do get a bite of this Forbidden Fruit once in a 
while, and I will explain to you how it happens, for not 
many people know the secret. It seems that Eve, like 
some—not all—of her daughters, was an economical 
soul, and when she had eaten the apple clear down to 
the core she thought it a pity to throw it away, as Adam 
did his. So she saved the seed and carried it out of 
the garden with her, past the terrible sentinel, by put- 
ting it in a pocket which she had cleverly concealed, 
after the manner of women, in the folds of her fig-leaf 
apron. 


314 THE NINE SONS OF SATAN 


Now what became of the apple seeds nobody knows. 
Very likely they got scattered along the trail as the 
evicted pair wandered about in search of a new home, 
for we may assume that the pocket had a hole in it, 
since Eve had not had much practice at needlework, 
and an eyeless locust thorn with a vine tendril hitched 
to it does not make a very handy needle and thread, as 
you would know if you had tried it. It does not appear 
that Eve made any systematic attempt to plant them, 
or, if she did, Adam must have rooted out the seed- 
lings as weeds or Cain pulled them up from mischief. 
Anyhow, after the babies came Eve was too busy and 
too happy to think much about the lost paradise. This, 
I say, is all speculation, and your guess is as good as 
mine, if not better. All we know is that somehow the 
Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge got scattered all over 
the world and is found today in the most unexpected 
places. Every little while somebody gets hold of one 
of the apples and it makes him wise. Sometimes he is 
wise enough to save the seed and try to cultivate it. 
The universities are all supposed to run nurseries for 
raising the fruit and grafting it on to common stock, 
but it’s hard work and some years the yield is mighty 
slim. ‘The trouble is that in the course of centuries the 
Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge has got crossed with 
all kinds of other trees. There is not a pure strain of 
it anywhere in the world. When they attempt to grow 
it pure by cuttings or self-fertilization it dies out. 
Then again it pops up as a mutant on all sorts of 
shrubs. It appears, transforms, and disappears in a 
more perplexing way than that Cnothera which the 
Mendelists are always talking about., 


YE SHALL BE AS GODS 315 


But in spite of all this some real progress is being 
made in the cultivation of the fruit, especially in recent 
years, and in time we may hope that there will be 
enough of it to go around. For it is the only antidote 
to the poison disseminated by the Sons of Satan. One 
who could live on it alone would be absolutely immune 
to all their witchcraft. For instance, enough has been 
grown to paralyze whole hosts of Wassin’s pestilential 
myrmidons. 

Whenever men eat of the Fruit of the Tree they be- 
come as Gods knowing good and evil. Unto them is 
given knowledge of the words which make powerless 
the mightiest of the offspring of the Evil One. Then 
may they command the jinns and afreets and they will 
obey; they will become the servants of man, the slaves 
of the lamp, and obedient to the ring which bears the 
seal of Solomon the Wise. Though a jinn may cover the 
earth like a tempest cloud, yet at the word of one who 
knows he will change into a mist and shrink together 
and condense until he can enter a brass bottle. Then 
the bottle can be stopped with a leaden seal whereon is 
engraved the Great Name of God and cast into the sea 
to remain for all the ages of ages.’ 

1 The germ of this fantasia may be found in a footnote to “The 
Thousand Nights and a Night” (V. III, p. 229) by Sir Richard 
Burton, who doubtless knew more of devilry than any man since 
Faust. I am also indebted for a suggestion to Papini, who pro- 
fessed to have it on the lowest authority as he tells in “Que le 
Diable me dit” in the Mercure de France. Papini after the war 
repented of his past and wrote an ecstatic Life of Christ that be- 
came one of our best sellers. “The Nine Sons of Satan” was pub- 


lished in The Unpopular Review of January, 1915, and I am in- 
debted to Mr. Henry Holt for the privilege of reprinting it. 





INDEX 


Aaron, 50 

Abiogenesis, 231 

Abraham, 58, 90, 236 

Adam, 5 

Adversity, 137 

Ajax, 74 

Aked, 260 

Alcohol, 300 

American Revolution, 37 
Amos, 61 

Angels, 9, 58 

Angels of Mons, 126 
Anglo-Saxons, 279 
Anthropomorphism, 52, 72, 77 
Antinomies, 208 
Antiquarianism, 150 

Aquinas, Thomas, 39, 213, 222 
Architects, 54 

Arnold, Matthew, 119 

Artists, 53, III 

Astrology, 132, 147 

Augustine, 30, 116, 264 
Authorized Version, 255, 262 


Bacon, 87, 150 

Baptism, 26, 45 

Barnard, 99 

Bergerac, Cyrano de, 206 
Bergson, 160 

Bible, 46, 590 

Black and White, 78 
Blake, 85, 118 

Bohr’s atomic theory, 213 
“Bovarysme,” 172 

Bragg, Sir William, 208 
Brooks, Phillips, 37 
Browning, 28, 171 

Bryan, William Jennings, 131 
Burton, Sir Richard, 313 


Carlyle, 43, 123 

Chemistry, 36, 290 

Chemistry of the Greatest Mir- 
acle in the Bible, 3 

Chesterton, Gilbert K., 112 

Church as a Promoter, 30 

Columbus, 91, 151 

Communion, 26 

Conservatives, 158 

Copernicus, 211 


Dalton, 214 

Danforth, Ralph E., 235 
Dark Ages, III 
Darwinism, 160, 203, 233 
Daudet, Léon, 120 
Davenport, C. B., 232 
David, 62 

Democritus, 213 
Demonology, 129, 2990 
De Quincey, 122 

Devils, 71, 209 

Divining rods, 130 
Doyle, Sir Conan, 126 
Drake, 127 

Duty of Intelligence, 189 


Each in His Own Tongue, 252 
Eddington, 210, 217, 218 
Education, 162 

Edwards, Jonathan, 39, 213 
Edwin, King, 279 

Einstein, 203, 214 

Elisha, 62 

Erasmas, 264 

Ethics, 202 

Ethics of Evolution, 226 
Eugenics, 234 

Eve, 229, 300, 314 

Evil, 100 

Evolution, 160, 207, 226, 233 


317 


318 INDEX 


Faith, 82, 87 
Faraday, 87 
Fourth of July, 284 
Franklin, 79 
Funeral customs, 15 


Galileo, 204, 210 
Gandhi, 114 

Garden of Eden, 17 
Gaultier, Jules de, 172 
Geometry of Ethics, 200 
Goethe, 73 

God, Pictures of, 48 
God’s laws, 288 

Good Samaritan, 34 
Goodspeed, 252, 262, 265 
Gravitation, 84 

Great Backsliding, 106 
Gregory, 274 


Haldane, J. B. S., 109 
Haldane, Viscount, 223 
Hammurabi, 123 
Harding, President, 129 
Heaven, 19 

Hellwald, 119 

Henry, Patrick, 38 
Heraclitus, 14 

Higher Critics, 67 
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 268 
Homer, 52 

Hugo, 99 

Huxley, 36, 116 
Hypocrisy, 164 


Independent, The, 37 
Inge, Dean, 222 
Intelligence, 190 
Internal Conflict, the, 94 
Inverted Hypocrisy, 164 


JaeKe Wieden e 
Jacob, 16, 66, 70 
Jastrow, Joseph, 128 
Jeanne d’Arc, I 
Jeans, J. H., 215 
Jefferson, 60, 91 
Jehovah, 71 
Jephthah, 71 


Job, 194, 260 

John the Baptist, 236, 248 
Jordan, David Starr, 125, 132 
Joshua, 8 


Kepler, 75 

King James Version, 173, 255, 
262, 267 

Kipling, Rudyard, 136, 167, 284 

Kitchener, 127 

Koran, 59 


Lamb, Charles, 27 

Lambuth, David K., 129 

Lawrence, D. H., 122 

Laws of nature, 5, 74, 88 

Lest We Forget, 284 

Lodge, Sir Oliver, 125, 214 

Looking Backward and Living 
Forward, 142 

Lowell, 17, 36 

Lucretius, 52, 213 

Lying, 165, 175 


Machen, Arthur, 126 

Magic, 132 

Marcus Aurelius, 261 
Materialism, 157, 221 
Mathews, A. P., 12 

Matter, 213, 217 

Metchnikoff, 116 

Mill, John Stuart, 118 
Millikan, R. A., 240 
Minister, 20 

Miracles, 3 

Missionary Talk, 273 
Modern English versions, 270 
Moffatt, 260 

Mohammed, 54 

Moses, 50, 54, 66, 90, 105, 123 
Music, 31, 44, 53, 300 


Nature, 68, 74, 88, 118 

Nef, 73 

Nevins, John L., 129 

New Testament, 71, 256, 262 
Newton, 83, 214, 242 
Nietzsche, 122 

Nine Sons of Satan, 299 


INDEX 


Nordmann, Charles, 215 


Old Testament, 51, 63, 71, 105, 


193 
Origin of Species, 233 


Pagan, II5 

Painting the Picture of God, 48 

Palestine, 27, 29 

Pau, 71 

Papini, 252, 313 

Pastor and preacher, 42 

Patriotism, 22 

Patten, William, 238 

Paul, 98, 103, I16, 125, 196, 254, 
256 

Peter, 106 

Petrie, Flinders, 281 

Petroleum, 302 

Pharisees, 248 

Pictures of God, 65 

Pilgrim, 91 

Plato, 52, 54, 98, 100, 212 

Planck’s quantum theory, 213 

Plotinus, 212 

Plutarch, 160 

Poincaré, 148, 150, 205, 216 

Pope, 35 

Preachers, 44 

Priestley, 7 

Priests and Prophets, 41 

Printing, 32 

Progress in ethics, 33 

Promoter, Church as, 30 

Prophets, 41, 158 

Puritans, 27, 45, 54, 206 


Relativity, 203, 223 
Religion and Relativity, 203 
Resurrection, 14 

Revival of Witchcraft, 124 
Ritual, 26 

Rossetti, 102 

Russell, Bertrand, 223 


Sabbath, 22 
Sargent, 56 
Satan, 118, 299 
Science, 36, 197 


319 


Scientific method, 69 

Sermon without Text or Moral, 
247 

Sermons, 25, 194 

Shakespeare, 259 

Shaw, 165 

Sinai, 201 

Snoddy, George S., 127 

Spengler, Oswald, 281, 282 

partie rapes of Daily Life, 
I 

Squiers, George O., 109 

Stewart, E. W., 209 

Struggle for Existence, 137 

Superstition, 124, 134 

Symbolism, 75 


Teaching, 44 

Telling the Truth, 175 

Ten Commandments, 50, 155, 
288 

Tennyson, 64, 105, 243 

Theology, 21, 39, 65 

Tobit, 58 

Truth, 175, 180 

Tyndale, William, 262 


Uses of Adversity, 137 


Vaihinger, 173 
Van Loon, 252 
Van Tyne, 37 
Voliva, 134 


Walker, Williston, 46 
Washington, 91 

Wells, 58 

Weyl, Hermann, 221 

Whately, Archbishop, 230 
When We Were Heathen, 273 
Whitehead, Alfred North, 221 
Whitworth, Clarence W., 63 
Wisdom, 191 

Witchcraft, 130, 132 


Xenophanes, 72 


Zeus, 71 
Zoroaster, 54, 205 


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serie as Renae) 


pecs 
tse eS 
serene opie 


Ses iet4 
ears 1 
% ; : aieta 
< : aes 





